Showers & Toe Nails

Mom has reluctantly allowed care staff to help her with two showers now. I am thankful for staff’s gentle persistence with this. While I don’t think mom knows any longer that she’s not showering independently, there’s a dignity aspect about it that would be important to her if she did know, and that’s important to me.

During what seems like my daily phone call with the community’s wellness department, today the gal I was speaking with apologized for not catching that mom hasn’t trimmed her toe mails in what looks like months. I asked her, “Honey, how would you know?” It’s only because they are now helping her shower, and that she suddenly showed up to an activity in her slippers, that they discovered her nails have grown out in a “very unique form,” and are very thickened. They tried to trim mom’s toe nails, but were afraid they’d hurt her. I’m going to go see mom after work on Wednesday, bring a foot-soak-sized lavender ‘bath-bomb’ my eldest daughter made, our most robust nail clippers (one of which was my fathers), a nail file, and see how far I can get with a pedicure. I did this (minus the foot soak) for my dad when he was in the hospital. I will always hold dear to my heart helping him with a personal hygiene task he was no longer able to do, and how grateful he was.

The community has a podiatrist who comes in monthly. I’ve asked the HSD to add mom to the doctor’s rounds.