Good lord...I'm getting dementia! It
wasn't until Ned mentioned it this morning that I realized I had not posted
an entry yesterday!
It was on the whole for the most part, a
quiet day yesterday. Ned came over to install a new shade over the
kitchen sink. Silly to get so excited about it but it was a type of
shade I had not seen before and, having lived with one that is very old and
ripped for years, I was thrilled to have this new design brightening up the
room.
Things went as every day, with Walt taking
some time out to go to lunch with office buddies. I don't even
remember what I did, other than taking a nap.
But around 5:30 came a call from Atria.
My mother had gone into someone's room and "grabbed her" and since they have
observed her behavior as "off" this week, they thought she might have a
bladder infection. I said I'd get her in to the doctor this morning,
but they wanted her seen NOW. Too late to get to the local Kaiser, so
we drove her to the ER in Vacaville, where after extensive waiting, and lots
of complaining, it was determined that there was no sign of infection.
I was pleased that the catheter insertion went well. Last time she
screamed so loud and kicked at the nurse and threatened her and I was just
dreading it this time, but the nurse was great and it was over before my
mother even knew it was happening. And there is no sign of infection,
which was good.
She was, of course, very unhappy to be out at
the doctor's and complained a lot. When we got into the car to go
home, she said, very plaintively that all she wanted was for something nice
to happen and that nothing nice ever happens to her. She wants to go
home, close her eyes, go to sleep and never wake up. So I asked if
she'd like to go out to dinner. At first she said yes and then when I
mentioned it again, she got that very submissive tone I hate and said "I'll
do whatever you want." I just wanted to do something that might shake her
out of her now-perpetual funk.
We went to Denny's and she was happy to be in
some place new. This was the placemat at our seats
My mother kept looking at it as if she knew
she was supposed to eat the food, but couldn't figure out how. She
asked me which she should eat first and I told her we would order off the
menu and then eat.
I ordered her a broiled chicken off the
senior menu and hoped she could eat it all, since she seems to eat so little
these days. It came with soup, salad, bread and fruit and each thing
came in a separate bowl. She is easily overwhelmed, so when the soup
came first and she started eating it (but didn't know what she was eating
and wasn't sure she was eating it properly) and then two more plates
arrived, I moved the soup out of the way and gave it to Walt because surely
that would push her over the top and she couldn't eat it all.
Walt and I each had a cobb salad, which was
huge
(shown with my mother's fruit bowl)
She started eating her salad and just kept
putting one bite after the other in her mouth untilshe had finished
everything, including dipping her bananas and grapes into the salad dressing
and then eating the extra salad dressing with her spoon out of the bowl on
the side, spreading it on her chicken and then picking up her chicken and
eating it like a biscuit, etc.
She started clearing away her place,
including putting her napkin in what was left of her glass of water, then
she lifted it out, spread it out, tore it into quarters and started eating
it. I told her it was a napkin. "I KNOW it's a napkin," she
said, continuing to put it into her mouth. I took it away from her
after she finished the first quarter.
Then she took her spoon and tried to eat the
ice cream on the placemat. I couldn't believe how much she had eaten
already but asked her if she wanted ice cream and she said she did. I
ordered a sundae for the 3 of us to share and she ate most of that and then
tried to eat the placemat ice cream again. When I mentioned that she
had already eaten ice cream and she said she didn't remember eating
anything, but she would not object if someone gave her a bowl of ice cream.
I decided she didn't have an infection she
was just starving! Actually, I think she has lost the ability to feel
hunger or to feel full. Put it in front of her and she eats it.
No food in front of her and she doesn't feel hungry. She obviously
doesn't TASTE anything since she didn't know what she was eating with the
soup and saw nothing odd about the taste of the napkin.
But I think it did perk up her spirits
briefly to be in a restaurant and I told Walt we need to take her out every
3-4 weeks or so to a restaurant just to give her a change of scenery.
Preferably a place with linen napkins!!
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