Letter to the Health Services Director of Mom’s Community
Hi Again, Thank you so much for setting up mom’s walker!! Question for you: She is constantly steering left into all sorts of things. She course corrects upon suggestion, or getting stopped by the chair leg, wall, whatever. Any thoughts on this? It doesn’t seem to distress her at all. To my untrained eye it […]
New Year’s Eve Dinner
Mom’s AL community kept things on the down-low for New Years this year. Very few family members attended. It looked like this: We arrived at mom’s apartment to find her absent. We put her periodicals on the coffee table, scooped Elvis’ box, and placed his food dish in the sink for a much needed soak. […]
Six Year Anniversary
Yesterday was the six year anniversary of this blog. I will always remember which day I started this chronicle as it was the day my grandson was born. It is hard to contemplate that my mother has never known my sweet boy except through the lens of dementia. The soother to that realization is he […]
House Call
Dr. O made a house-call to mom’s apartment on the 26th. If I haven’t expressed my appreciation adequately for Dr. O, let me take a moment… This is palliative care practitioner who kept my mama as a patient when our university hospital defunded his in-place program. He now works mainly in the hospital, and keeps […]
Christmas
Christmas was good and busy. We started the day enjoyably in the kitchen prepping roast potatoes, making fresh horseradish, and a pecan pie to take to dinner. Late morning my nurse-kiddo and I met at Jane’s community to share Christmas greetings with her. We were pretty jazzed to find her out and about in the […]
Community Christmas Dinner
The overview: We joined mom for the community Christmas dinner the afternoon of the 21st. The meal was amazing, well crafted, and filling (I had a tangerine for dinner that evening!). Mom was doing pretty good. She was in a peaceful space, and delightful company. Out intention was to arrive at mom’s apartment 15-minutes before […]
Island Roof
The Island house roof showed up with a leak about a week ago. My once and future property manager went out three times with tar and roof-in-a-tube to do what seems like the impossible: Seal a leak on a 40-year old roof that has many suspicious spots, but no clear voids. It did not help […]
Tired
Today was, very likely, my final garden kickoff for the year. 31 gardens in just over three months. In that time we/I hired nine educators for my program, I traveled to the far side and middle of our state, plus many miles and days of travel that saw me home each evening. This week saw […]
Jane’s 96th Birthday!
On November 17th, after my eldest and I returned from our quick visit with mom, we went to Jane’s community to set up a surprise party for her 96th birthday. My daughter preplanned details right down to decor, GF nibbles, and proper tea for a tea party for her grandma. Set up was enjoyable and […]
Changing Mom’s Rx Drug Plan – A Saga…
My mother retired from a preeminent university with pension, medical, dental and vision benefits, for life. In 2013 with the help of Obamacare, the university’s regents saw fit to push out-of-state retirees onto the exchange. The regent’s lives were suddenly simplified. Mine, however, became suddenly more complicated. When mom got notice of this, she was […]
Dementia Dance - Travels with Mom 