Posted 4-5-19
When I was a toddler, I was something of a prodigy. I wasn’t super cute nor was I particularly brainy. No, my IQ was normal, if slightly (?) south of such. I wasn’t a prodigy of a useful subject like math, science or piano, mind you. I couldn’t work on computers… because they were only found in government/industry offices and were the size of a Plymouth. I couldn’t tie my shoes very well nor could I read Koine Greek. Nope. My superpower: I was a clock virtuoso, but only the ones with Roman Numerals. (Covered Bridges note: Our childhood clocks used to be analog and we didn’t ask them “Alexa, what time is it?”. ) Our primary clock in our living room was a patina-strewn banjo with an unintelligible-to-many Roman numeral clock face filling much of its head.
In hindsight, I should have placed this marvel on my resume.
Have you heard the phrase “Even a broken clock is right twice a day.”? Well, real time overlapped my broken clock mechanism yesterday on the med discussion from yesterday’s cornbread. 🙁 I wish I wasn’t right.
Mom had a terrible time after I left. My 3-hour visit yesterday was positive, but peppered with good with the bad.
The good: she was happy and much more active. Quality of life=success? She could walk, if hunched. She talked, as best she can. We even played some catch with the big inflatable beachball, although mom did hit the unsuspecting, Parkinson’s and Lewy Body dementia victim and Sweet 17er Mrs. W on the forehead with a thwomp. 🙁 She didn’t/couldn’t think through her choices as to whom could catch the ball and Mrs. W is NOT a candidate. The ever-gracious princess Mrs. W apologized for not catching it. 🙁
The bad: the anxiety went in like a lion and peace out like a lion after her med change. She was super talkative and couldn’t keep focused to eat. She hallucinated a lot, she fixated on things and had to be distracted, and she couldn’t get completely chilled out.
We had a nice visit, even though I could see the writing on the wall, and expected the escalation that came. I talked to the charge nurse on the way out for 30 minutes about my concerns and she shared them. Sigh.
Two hours after I was gone, mom refused meds, wouldn’t eat, was super excitable and had a significant wardrobe malfunction that would render her TV show Rated PG-13 at best even on Netflix….all because we had her muscle relaxer eliminated and her psychotropic cut in half. Even a broken Roman numeral clock was right again with my prediction. 🙁
The charge nurse suggested patience as meds take 2-3 weeks to level out and be fully normalized and metabolized fully. My fear is the night crew, not as patient with her as the day, will have trouble with her and the calls and trips to the land of behavioral health time-outs will start again.
The longer you acclimate yourself to the moods and behaviors of your loved one with the disease, the easier it is to see situations arise. This is one reason why they need an every day advocate. I wish I could be there more than I am to head stuff like this off. Of course, even in my early-childhood superpower, I had an Achilles’s heel: I couldn’t read the regular clocks in grade school because I learned time with the Romans. I had to relearn the real numbers. Today, I have to relearn to trust my instincts on mom’s meds because I can’t wait around for the broken clock to be right.
#EndALZ
