Subj : Long weekend (not the good kind)
To   : All
From : poindexter FORTRAN
Date : Tue Oct 08 2024 07:52 am

We've been managing my mom's cognitive decline recently. The past few
weeks have been dealing with my mom thinking the neighbors were calling
her crazy, people driving by the house and looking in while she's
cooking, and hearing people in her back yard.

She has a urinary tract infection, apparently they present with
hallucinations often in elderly women.

7 days of oral antibiotics later, needing to make sure she keeps track
of the dosage, and she's still experiencing problems.

Saturday morning, she fell in the bathroom, breaking her hip and elbow.
Wasn't wearing her medicalert necklace, she's lost it and didn't tell
me. She had to crawl to the phone to call me. Ambulance ride to the
hospital, lots of regular hallucinations combined with no food for 18
hours while they try to get her into surgery, then post-anasthesia
grogginess. All this happened on her 86th birthday.

They have her on an IV for liquids, an antibiotic drip for the UTI, and
they're monitoring her food intake. So, that's good. I got the feeling
she's been skipping meals out of lack of appetite or forgetting about
meals.

We had just looked at assisted care facilities last week, and were
getting ready to work with her on moving. Now, that's a done deal -
after outpatient rehab for her hip and elbow.

After a sleep-deprived weekend, I went to wish an old college friend of
mine a happy birthday on Facebook. She shares the same birthday as my
mother and she would always ask how she was doing. I Looked on her
timeline and saw lots of letters of condolence by her friends and a
memorial service last week - she was found dead in her house, apparently
of natural causes. She was 55.

I want this weekend back.


 
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