Mom, Here and There

After two days of Mom bouncing out of her room all night like a cuckoo in a clock, for some reason she slept through last night without a break. No meds, or anything I can identify, just "I think I'll go to bed now," and off she went not to rise until this morning.

She had been particularly dozy most of yesterday afternoon and evening, being a bit OCD reading and rereading the nutrition information printed on the back of her mini-box of raisins. And she was determined to write/draw on her own hand in ink complaining "Whatever happened to personal freedom?" when my brother and I made her stop and threatened to take the pen away. After that she just sort of napped on and off after dinner until she went to bed.

This morning she woke early, had a doughnut and coffee and then a second breakfast of cereal and coffee followed by a cup of coffee after which she promptly dozed off having built up an eight decade resistance to caffeine. She snored lightly for about fifteen minutes then suddenly woke and asked me "How many bees do you have left?"

I told her I thought she was still dreaming. She replied, "Well then, I guess I'll go do my chores," went to her room and laid out a week's worth of clothes on her bed.

Mom-Sequiturs: Promise Kept

Mom has a tendency to nod off frequently during the day, usually when reading. Partially this is due to her bad sleeping habits and predilection for getting up several times during the night thinking it's morning already. Partially it's just due to being almost 92 years old. Usually, her head slowly sinks to her chest until the book falls from her hands which wakes her to start the cycle over again.

This morning, after breakfast, she was reading her latest large-print book from the library. Suddenly, she closed the book put her head all the way back on the couch cushion and declared, "I think I'll snore a little for a while." Which she did.

Living in the Moment, Extreme Edition

We had a Merry Christmas.

It being Sunday, I fixed French toast for Mom and myself. We then waited until my brother arose (normally not before noon because of his work but this time because he was up late wrapping presents) before opening the gifts.

Mom was confused over who gave what to whom and who received what from whom. Since she does not go out shopping any more, her gifts to us were bought by us (me for my brother, him for me) with her money. It's not easy trying to explain on-line shopping and express shipping to an Alzheimer's afflicted 91+ year-old. She kept insisting there were three small presents still to give and rearranging three sheets of writing paper on her table until my brother got out her checkbook and let her sign three $20 checks to each of her sons (my brother, myself and the middle one who will be down to visit this week with his kids). Then she was happy.

For dinner that evening, we had a delicious medium rare standing rib roast with Yorkshire pudding, garlic laced mashed potatoes, pickled mushrooms and summer squash sauteed with onions and grape tomatoes. And a bottle of 16-year-old Merlot found in the back of the cupboard (surprisingly still good despite the cork breaking when I attempted to open it). We topped it all off with apple pie and vanilla ice cream.

Mom's ice cream was melting while she ate the pie so I reminded her that the point was to eat them together which she did. When she was done we asked her if she wanted more and she said, "Just some ice cream," so I brought her seconds. When that was gone we asked if she'd had enough now to which she replied "Oh, yes! A prodigious plenty!"

We laughed. "Well, no wonder," my brother said. "You had two desserts!"

"No! When did that happen?"

"Just now. You had pie and ice cream and then more ice cream."

"What pie? I didn't have any pie. You boys are pulling my ear!"

We described in loving detail how we had offered her apple pie for dessert, which she accepted, and then the option of either whipped cream or ice cream (ice cream), and then the overkill of whipped cream on her ice cream on her pie (declined). She remained incredulous.

In the time it took to eat the second helping of ice cream, she had forgotten the first completely.

Mom-Sequiturs: "Dammit, Jim, I'm a Doctor Not a Stripper!"

I took Mom to one of her eye doctors this morning.

As usual, on the trip in, Mom turned to me and asked, "Which doctor are we going to today?"

I had told her once already before leaving the house but I told her again.

"Ah, yes," she said, nodding. "But that's his work name not his real name."

Spreading Holiday Greetings

Mom received a phone call from an old friend yesterday afternoon. At least I think it was an old friend.

When I told her "Marge" was calling Mom looked at me and shrugged. "Do I know her?" she asked.

"She's an old friend," I said, assuming.

"I don't remember that name."

She took the call anyway and a lot of "What's that, again?", "That's nice.",  "Who did?", and "You don't say." ensued for the next ten minutes. A fairly typical catching-up conversation.

After Mom hung up and returned to the living room, I said, "Well, that was a nice call."

Mom said, "Yes. She used to live here but she moved away and now she's somewhere up north in a residential community. What was her name?"

"Marge?"

Yes. Marge. I sure wish I knew who she was."

The Fog of "Now"

Yesterday as my brother went off to work Mom said goodbye to him and wished him well (as usual).

After a while I realized she had spent the last fifteen minutes or so staring at his room. (She sometimes gets into these OCD-like attention loops, usually when she's trying to read something she's written (or thinks she's written--she spent the better part of one evening trying to decipher the wrinkles in a used paper table napkin. She got upset when I couldn't read it to her.)).

I said, "What's the matter?" more to break the cycle than expecting a real answer.

She sighed and said, "I must have missed him. He went off without me seeing or saying anything."

"Mom, you talked to him before he left. He said goobye and you said goodbye to him and wished him good luck."

"I did?"

"Yes, Mom."

"Well, good for me," she said, and picked up her book.

Indeed.

A Temporary Glitch

Some section of Mom's brain shut down last night.

Just before it was time to change her Alzheimer's medication patch and start her eye drops, she got up to go to the bathroom promising to return "in a minute". Twenty minutes later, I went to check up on her (she can sometimes take a long time in there so I wasn't worried). She was in her room, rearranging clothing carefully laid out on her bed. I asked if she was coming out soon and reminded her it was past time for the meds. She said, "Yes," so I went back to the living room.

Another forty minutes gone by, I checked again. She was still in her room, in the dark, having tried and failed to change clothes for no obvious reason. The end result being she had put her underwear on over her pants. (It was funnier in Woody Allen's Bananas.) I turned on the light and tried explaining this to her several times with no success.

Finally, after a couple more visits from me and over two hours late for her meds, she emerged wearing a pullover shirt as a skirt (not for the first time). At that point I didn't care and quickly changed her patch and administered the drops. It was an hour past her normal bedtime. She sat on the couch.

Then she turned to me and said, "Where do you go after you're done working here?"

"Nowhere, Mom. I live here with you."

"Really. I don't recognize you. Have we met?"

"I'm your son."

"I never knew that. And what about the others?"

"There are no others, Mom. It's just the three of us. You and your two sons."

"Upstairs?"

"There is no 'upstairs'. This is a ranch house. My room is across the hall from yours."

"I know that. I meant downstairs. You live here?"

"Across the hall."

"And yet I've never seen you before. I don't know why we've never met."

"You see me every day, Mom. I make your breakfast and I make your dinner and I give you your eye drops every day."

"Really. I never knew that."

"Well, you did know it but you just forgot."

"Well, it's good to know. Again." I did have to smile at that.

After that, she folded up some of her clothes I had just taken from the dryer and went to bed. She slept through the night without interruption and, in fact, I could hear her gently snoring through her door.

This morning she awoke at her usual time, bright, chipper, cheerful and fully cognizant. She knows me, knows where she is and recalls nothing of last night's episode. Maybe it was just a combination of exhaustion and over-concentration from trying to dress in the dark.

Mom-Sequiturs: It Depends on the Meaning of "Have To"

When I got up this morning Mom was already up and parked on the couch. I went to check if she had coffee or if I needed to make some (I did) and she was sitting there on the phone with someone. Now, she can hardly hear anyone on the phone anymore and is easily confused by more than simple declarative sentences (she loses her way in subordinate clauses) even in person let alone when distorted electronically over the phone. She never dials out so this had to be an incoming call she had picked up.

When she saw me she sighed and said, "I can't understand this or make her stop and explain anything," and handed me the phone. I was all set to ream out someone who would use high-pressure sales tactics on an obviously old lady when I heard the female robotic caller say ". . . if [something something] press four, if . . ." and hung up.

I said, "Its a recording, Mom. You can just hang up. You don't have to sit there and listen to that."

She looked at me and said, "Then what else do I have to listen to?"

Under the Onion Tree

Mom's eyesight is not what it used to be despite daily applications of drops for macular degeneration and retinal problems. (I apply the drops ever since I discovered she was not hitting her eyes when she tried to administer them herself. She wasn't tilting her head back far enough and was just dribbling the drops down her cheeks. Not surprisingly, her check-ups have shown stabilization since I took over.)

Anyway, yesterday morning she looked out the large window through the lanai and said, "Well, there's absolutely nothing going on out there today." Meaning there's no significant gale blasting through. Normal breezes are too subtle for her to detect. She can also see the occasional bird if it's sitting on a wire and contrasted against the sky, but she frequently thinks a dark blue sky is clouds and vice versa, a light gray overcast becomes clear sky. "Yep," she said. "Nothing going on at all . . . except those three onions."

Onions?

So I tried to see where she was looking. The lemon tree has three almost ripe lemons clustered together like a pawn shop sign.

So now we have an onion tree.

Mom-Sequiturs

So we're at the first doctor's appointment of the day (Her GP. Both appointments went very well.) and after examining her blood tests and finding nothing wrong, he asks her a series of questions ending with, "So, how's your memory?"

To which she replies, "Fine. Anything I can't remember--forget it."

Hard to argue with that.

Mom-Sequiturs

This morning Mom was reading a book she picked out of the living room bookshelf. It was a large hardcover. With standard type. I had been getting large type and, preferably, softcover books from the library for her because she can't read normal size printing and regular books are too heavy and tiring for her to hold for any length of time.

When I mentioned to her she was reading a standard book she looked at it and said with a note of surprise, "Well, so I am."

When I went to give her her morning eye drops I apologized for interrupting her. She put the book down and said, "That's O.K. I've read it before. I just don't know if they'll ever complete that contract. Although they do in the end."

Mom-Sequiturs

I administer eye drops to Mom every day, once in the morning and twice in the evening. One Rx is for glaucoma and the other is for macular degeneration. Mom used to do it herself but it wasn't working because, in the end, all she was doing was pulling out her lower eyelid and dribbling drops down her cheek (she wasn't even getting close) so now I do it.

I have to warm the drops in my hand since she is very sensitive to the "cold" (room temperature) liquid and she doesn't put her head back far enough (because of the strain it puts on her spine--which is why she wasn't able to get near her eyes when she was doing it herself) and she tends to flutter her eyelids so the drops often end up in her eyelashes or on her cheek anyway (except, unlike when she was doing it herself, I keep at it until we succeed) so she comments whenever we hit it just right.

Last night we got one drop square on her left iris. First try.

She smiled and exclaimed, "Bird's eye!"

Sisters

Mom's kid sister telephoned yesterday. Actually, the procedure was closer to that used by heads of state, self-important CEOs and movie moguls ("Get me Matt Damon's people!"). My cousin Elaine called me to let me know that her mom wished to speak to my mom if Mom was available. I said she was and we both went to put the old girls on the line. Mine got there first and kept shouting into the phone, "Hello? Is anybody there?" even after my aunt was on the line.

The conversation sounded something like a multiple translator hot-line dial-up between the US president and the USSR general secretary, too, if they were both deaf and half-senile.

"Don't speak so loudly, I can't hear you."
"You're where? Where are you calling from?"
"Oh, that's nice. What did you do? Where are you?"
"Where am I? Where am I?" ("You're home, Mom.") "I'm home. They've fixed it up nice so people can come in and help." (It's just my brother and me. No one comes in.)
"What did you do? Ice cream? Where?"
and so on. . ..

Mom thinks her sister has lost/is losing her mind and she has had at least one stroke, but, honestly, whenever I've seen my aunt (last spring when my cousin, Gerry, died) she seems to be doing just fine. Mom's the one who is ahead in this race.

They had a nice conversation during which about one third of the potential amount of information was actually exchanged, and then Elaine came back on the line, and I was going to have Mom give me the phone so I could ask her for some genealogical information on that side of the family, but the phone's battery died and being the old piece of junk that it is, it has no memory, or last call redial, or anything of that sort so I'll have to try and find her number somewhere else.

Mom-Sequiturs

MOM (While reading a National Geographic article on Alaska): "Can you imagine all the natural wealth up there? If you had a million dollars you could become rich in Alaska."

Mom-Sequiturs

Mom: Where are the scissors?

Me: Over there on the coffee table.

Mom: (Searches around on the coffee table and comes up with a magnifying reading glass.) Well, I guess I'll never know.

Me: Know what?

Mom: Whether I'm supposed to be using this or the scissors.

Me: Can't help you. I don't know what you're trying to do.

Mom: Me neither.

Mom-Sequiturs

Mom: I don't understand how it got dark so early today. (It's going on 10 pm and been dark for almost three hours now.)

Me: The days are getting shorter. It's close to winter.

Mom: Winter?! We haven't even had summer yet!

Me: It's the end of October. (Mind you, she's been admiring all the Hallowe'en decorations and sampling the candy for the past week.)

Mom: Well, I don't know what they do with the weather around here!

Me: . . ..

Mom-Sequiturs

Re: the Tampa Bay/Kansas City game last night as she was getting up to go to bed:

"Well, I hope whoever's playing wins."

Mom-Sequiturs

Sometimes Mom says things for which I have no response. We were watching the Notre Dame football game Saturday:

"For all the years this (current) game has been going on, I don't think I've ever seen anyone win."

And the Tampa Bay game Sunday:

"They're not even playing hard enough to warm me up. I need to put my sweater on. I told them that two years ago."