Sunday, November 7, 2010

My mother would have been 94 today. She died three and a half years ago but we still miss her.
The last two days have been quite bumpy - meds never quite working, a lot of saliva. coughing and phlegm.
I did manage to get to church for the first time in a month.
I mentioned a few days ago that we moved in here a year ago and thinking back to that time, I realize how much has changed with John since then. Several people have asked me in what ways things have changed.
The ways are actually very numerous. A few that stand out are:
- when we moved in, John was still walking on his own, or with a cane, or on my arm .He now either uses the walker, or I push him on it, or in a wheel chair
- he was able (holding on to my arm) to go up and down the flight of stairs which leads directly to our car - now we have to go out to the elevator, down to the lobby and then I bring the car around to where he can get into it - we have to always take the walker with us
- he was able to get into bed by himself - I now have to pull him in
- he was able to get up out of his lift chair by himself - he now cannot do it without me hanging on to him and if he gets the chair up too high he slides on to the floor
- he was still able to eat food, and take his meds via mouth - now he has a feeding tube and about the only thing he takes by mouth is some ice cream - this is positive and negative. Positively, he is no longer losing weight and I can get his meds into him even when he is sleeping. Negatively eating no longer has any attraction for him, and so going out to a restaurant or having friends in for dinner, is not attractive either
- he was able to go out shopping with me and especially liked to go to Wal-Mart or Safeway, where he could drive their shopping carts around - he says he can no longer do that at all.
- although his voice was very weak, and he often spoke in a whisper, he was able to talk whenever he wanted to - now, especially in the late afternoon and evening  he cannot get his mouth to open so he can talk at all. The speech therapy has given him a louder voice when he can use it.
- he used to spend a lot of time on his computer, doing e-mail or playing solitaire - now he goes for days or even weeks without turning his computer on (so please send e-mails to me, not John )
- He was on 3 sinemet every 3 hours when we moved here, he is now on 4 sinemet every 90 minutes.
- an area that has improved is his sleeping pattern - when we moved in, he was not sleeping most of the night but all morning and into the afternoon - now he goes to bed at 11pm and usually goes to sleep. About half the time he sleeps through the night but he is up by 9:30 - 10:00am whether he sleeps all night or is up for part of the time.

Back to the present - I would have to say this was a one thumbs down day for John.