Well, I did not make it back today (Monday.) Yesterday Mom was alert again, and we made a few phone calls. Mom was especially sweet with Vivien, saying she wished she could lend a hand with Viv's housework and kids. She seemed very with it. She also said she should learn to use the phone again herself. I showed her the phone on her bed table, and put it on her lap, and I started out trying to get her to recognize where the numbers were on it. I could not get her to touch the numbers, and she showed no sign of connecting the object -- the phone set -- with what she wanted to do (i.e., learning to use it herself.) When Mom is most with it, I get enthusiastic about ideas like "if only she [i]could,[/i]" but then I hit reality. I realize she wants to [i]be talking on the phone herself,[/i] but that she cannot connect the phone set as it appears in reality with that desire. Of course, the desire itself has to last long enough for any effort to be rewarded. She has a seemingly insurmountable wall between such a desire, and doing the physical things it takes to bring about the thing she wants (in this case, move her hand to the number pad.) In any event, she also opined yesterday that she should have everybody's address... Jenni thought that might be because she has always been so good about sending people cards on birthdays, holidays and the like.
Laura's going to pursue getting a monthly urine culture. She's noticed that antibiotics for infections sometimes result in a much more lucid state, and she's wondering if some of Mom's confusion is linked to UTIs that are coming and going undiagnosed; we'll see. So far she's made no progress on doing even very simple things, and this time a week or two ago I was wondering if she'd spoken with me for the last time (she had one of those days when she did not speak the whole time while I was visiting.) It was like that on my first visit with her Saturday as well, although if you read that entry, you know that she ended the visit with two words (after silence for an hour.)
But it's possible that there are frequent UTIs we don't know about. If so, they can be addressed with yet other antibiotics, and with a catheter to minimize the effects of her current arrangement. We'll see... consistent ability to focus may just be beyond her, or it could be completely within her power, but made that much more difficult because of repeated infections. If she can focus, considering what's important one day to be important the next day, one can take the next step and attempt to teach her to use the call button (that idea went nowhere when I originally seized on it,) and perhaps, eventually, the phone. Even if she could hold it to her own ear for incoming calls, that would be terrific. But one step at a time... if indeed any of it comes to pass.
Dan
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