The First Visit

I hadn't seen my mother since we left her at Eldervilla 2 weeks ago.  Today, Jeri is here and so she, Phil and I went to Woodland for the First Visit.  I was shocked when I saw her.  She was sound asleep but her face looked like she'd been in a prize fight.

Also her arms were covered in big red bruises and the back of her left hand was nearly black.

Sandy explained that the other night when he tried to give her her pills, she bit him and would not let go of his finger so they had to pry her jaws off of him, which resulted in the bruise on her jaw.  He also showed me the picture of his finger.

He also says she has been bumping into things a lot, which I know she did at Aria, but she never had bruises like these, but there are more things to bump into in a house than in a sterile facility.

Apparently "when she is good, she is very very good and when she is bad she is horrid." He says she has been refusing to go to the bathroom and he showed me a picture of her sitting on the floor in a pool of her urine.  But he also showed me videos of her laughing and interacting with the other residents. 

She broke her bedside lamp and tore up someone's book.  She has intruded on other people's bedrooms and tried to order one resident out of the house.

He thinks that once they get her medications right, things will be better, so I have called The Psychiatrist will ask him to please go and evaluate her and help determine the best medication for her--and we will happily pay.  I would feel worse about this if I didn't know that the Psychiatrist is very familiar with Eldervilla and recommends it highly, that he has a patient of his own there, and that he visits every couple of months.

Most of our visit went very well and Phil made friends with Simba the dog.

And I finally got a good picture of the dog myself (Nala, the other dog, was very wary of us).

We sat and visited on the porch and Jeri even took my mother on a short walk around the back yard labyrinth.

We visited for an hour, I signed tons of papers (I had to re-do them because when I signed them before Sandy thought my name was Beverly Rynders).  I'm not sure when I'll be back, but Jeri and Ned will probably go later this week.