Hello friends and family, Dan again. Saturday we missed blogging. Mom talked to her friend Jenny in Freehold, and with Marlene in England, and was generally fairly talkative. The truth is details are hard to remember with a day's passage, so I'll just move on to today.
Today, again, was a pretty good visit. We started out chatting, and again, Mom showed that peculiarity in her use of language - she knows the lead-up words, and then there is a key word (usually a noun) she can't get out. After exchanging "how are yous" and the like, she said "Should we get a..." Of course I was interested, and when the sentence did not end, I repeated the beginning of it for her. "Should we get a ... what, Mom?" She answered "I wanted to get a... but this is all right." This happens, as I've said. I never did get that noun.
In any event, Mom was able to talk a little with Vivien on the phone this afternoon, and then shortly thereafter a new aid was in with a breathing treatment (she's on oxygen and breathing treatments again, since her 02 saturation gets low easily). We talked a bit more, even though she had the mask on and the machine that administers the bronchial dilator is noisy.
I also asked the nurse about the schedule for putting the hand splints on; these are soft cylinder-shaped things they wrap her hands around, to fight contractions. If a patient does not use her hands for a long time, they will ball up and it will eventually become next to impossible to flex them again. So the purpose of the splints is to keep her hands from being completely closed at all times.
When the aid pulled her fists open a finger at a time to put the splints on, it did hurt her some, but then she got them around the splints. I told her that the hurt always went away after her hands had been in them for a while... I think that's true, from seeing her when the splints have been on for a while. She thanked me for my concern, and knowing Mom, it could as easily have been sarcastic as sincere. But she thanked me again before I left so I'm pretty sure it was sincere.
Speaking of sincere thanks, please accept mine for all your wonderful attention to her and your calls. She appreciates them. I know it is hard and sometimes it takes time and patience to know where you are in a conversation with her. I'd like to take a moment to mention that she does listen when people call. Sometimes she is trying to reply but her voice can be very low - for those of you who talk to her with the speaker on, I try to repeat those interjections for her, when I understand them.
Back at the Manor in New Jersey, Mom sometimes looked at us (and I think others noticed the same thing) with a sort of glare. We haven't seen that here. I never knew for certain whether there was any content to the glare, and she never voiced any angry sentiments to go with it. But in any event that seems to be gone. I don't read much into this -- the glare might be back tomorrow, for all I know, and it might or might not truly mean something in the first place. But I can't imagine that it's a bad thing that we aren't seeing it anymore.
When we talk to her, her eyes are almost always open now, whereas she used to have them closed often, sometimes for days at a time, and often shut tight. So that, too, is an improvement. And as we've mentioned before, she's started talking to us much more since coming here.
So there are good things and there are bad things about her condition; it's a matter of degrees.
Tomorrow there's a meeting where any concerned family members meet with staff, so I'm getting out of work a couple hours early to make sure we make it. It will be interesting to hear what concerns are voiced by other family members, even though each patient's issues are very different.
We'll check in tomorrow evening. Until then everybody be well and enjoy the people who bring you joy and the things that most entertain and amuse you, whatever they may be!
D
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