Posted 1/13/19
“Ned Flanders,
why don’t you get back in here and put on your pants!” -Sadie Flanders
“I can’t, I ain’t got my pants no more! The dang Baldnobbers stole em’
…” -Ned (standing on a ladder, in his long johns, with his house burning)
-Most memorable line from Fire in the Hole (Vintage roller coaster at the
Silver Dollar City theme park in Branson, Mo.)
Mom’s roller-coaster ride continues…nausea last night hopefully long enough after taking her pills (?), then successfully fought off her breakfast pills 🙁 . They did rope mom into her most critical pill by hiding it in her ice cream just after breakfast. This afternoon a sweet nurse coaxed her to take them all. Timing is out of whack, but it is better than derailing completely.
I wonder sometimes if heat causes some of the emotional/anxiety issues with the Sweet 17. The memory unit hovers in the mid 70’s, according to the thermostats, but according to my carcass’s experience feels more like mid to upper 80’s. I acknowledge that I am a foot under tall according to the idea height weight charts, but I gag in there. I sneak over and tweak down the heat when I can. Seniors with this terrible disease struggle with hot and cold. Mom, for a year, has overdressed. She tosses extra clothes on…often. I may show up and she have 2 pair of pants and 3 shirts, two of which belong to others. She dons gloves on walks in 90-degree weather. Sweating, she piles it on.
**** I think she truly understands the problem, just not the solution. *** This may be the only intelligent thing I have ever told you, but please catch it. Mom knows pills taste bad because she experiences it. Her reaction to the crap stimuli requires remembering outcomes. Hence she fights. She knows it stinks to lose things. Her reaction to the thought of losing things is hoarding and fixating and stressing. She knows water scares her (she has always been afraid of water…for over 60 years…due to a couple bad situations in water). She fights baths and even getting her hair washed. Alzheimer’s patients still feel, they just don’t know how on Earth to respond. 🙁 Not exactly rocket surgery or brain science here, but a truth nevertheless that all of us need to remember as we navigate these coaster rails. 🙂
Mom was fairly ok today all things considered. Word salad for speech, somewhat anxious…mostly typical un-fortune.
Really cruddy disease the more I learn about it, whether by experience, stimuli or response.
#EndALZ
