Settling In

Well...interesting day today.  Caroline slept in quite late and I finally went off to the store around 10, before she awoke, to get a corned beef.  Before she arrived, she told me she was lactose intolerant and so I'd purchased a quart of almond milk and used it to make blueberry muffins.  They were delicious!

When I got home from the supermarket, Caroline and Walt were eating breakfast (at the kitchen table, no less!) and the almond milk was on the table...so I'd done a good thing!

We chatted for awhile and then Caroline and Walt went out on a bike tour of Davis.  They visited the vet school, where she must be at 7:30 Monday morning (!!) and she got a tour of the campus, which hopefully she will remember when she is trying to find the place by herself.

While they were gone, I went to Atria.  Oh man...it was the worst day.  

She was in bed when I got there an when I woke her up she was disoriented and agitated.  When I talked to her she made no sense and I thought for a minute she had had a stroke because one side of her mouth seemed to be drooping, though as she started to wake up and talk, it wasn't drooping after all.

But I don't even know how to describe it.  I was there about an hour and a half.  And she kept talking about how much it hurt and she didn't know what to do for the pain, but when I tried to press her for where exactly the pain was, she said that since I'd been there the pain had stopped.  She was totally fixated on the "pain" she was feeling and asked if I felt like I was trying to get my two heads together.  She kept trying to figure out what was wrong and she didn't want to sound like a complaining old woman so she didn't want to let anybody know what was wrong with her.

And then she fainted again.  At first I thought she was being funny, but she fell hard against my chest and when I tried to talk to her, she didn't respond.  Then I thought she was dead, but I felt a pulse, so I shook her and called to her and she came out of it, disoriented like she always is.

I thought we had gotten beyond fainting, since nobody has mentioned a spell in at least two months.  I hope this doesn't spark another series of them.

At a lull in the non-conversation we were having, I mentioned that Caroline was with us and said she was a veterinarian.  Then all she could talk about is what she would find when she examined my mother.  Didn't even register that I was talking about an animal doctor.

[Aside--interestingly, Caroline says that her interest in study is animal brains, particularly dogs and aging and dementia or Alzheimers in dogs--I knew Lizzie was showing signs of dementia!]

I was afraid to leave her, but we were just, by now, staring at each other. so I turned on the TV to see what was on and found the Catholic station which was showing a special on St. Patrick...all that green in Ireland I figured she would enjoy, and she did.  She was even impressed at the thousands of tourists climbing Croagh Patrick (I was too...Walt and our kids climbed it and until I saw this special, I had no idea how steep it became toward the end! -- "It is one of the highest peaks in the West of Ireland. It rises 750 metres (2,500 feet) into the sky above County Mayo.")

Anyway, she did seem to be into it enough to enjoy it and so was calming down.  When the show was over the next show was the Daily Mass and I figured that was something familiar enough and simple enough to follow that I could feel comfortable leaving her, so I did.  I had not planned to go back tomorrow, but there is no way I can NOT go to check on her tomorrow.

I got home to a message from Walt that he and Caroline were at the Irish pub having a libation in honor of St. Patrick.  When they came home, Walt took a nap and then, after Jeopardy, I served my corned beef which, if I do say so, humbly, was one of the best corned beefs I have ever made.  I cooked it in apple juice with the veggies and added the cabbage for the last half hour or so.  Usually I eat my corned beef with catsup, but the flavor of this was so good I didn't want to ruin it with anything like that.

After dinner we sat around chatting.  She's such an interesting person and entertained us with stories of Fred, the orphan lamb who adopted her and how she had to wean him because the farmer didn't have time to coddle him after she left.  She also talked about some of the other places she had visited, including Kenya, where she worked with animals there.

Finally, she was fading, and so was Walt so they went upstairs and I came in here to get this written so I can get to sleep.