The reinforcements have arrived. The herbal witchdoctor is with us. I will be the first to admit that I know very little about herbs and essential oils and all the physical or metaphysical aspects of wound care. There is an entire field of herbal healing out there now. Who knew? It seems there are schools […]
It’s a certainty. Old habits don’t die, dementia or no. I lift Mom’s arm to put her bathrobe on. Her other arms comes up automatically to slip into the other sleeve. Same with underpants, or shoes. Same with food. She knows how and the habit is there, her reactions just don’t always work the way […]
I do have a great deal to be thankful for. Mom is 98 years old and her blood pressure is 125 over 91, heart rate 101, oxygen level 98%. More or less, gets herself up at night to use the bedside commode. Is lucid some of the time. Sleeps most of the time. Doesn’t argue […]
Best friends have a completely different way of talking to each other than do acquaintances. Yesterday, the trip to Brennan’s in Houston to connect Lady Y and Lady M went swimmingly. Except, of course, for the traffic jam on I-45 that held us up for almost two hours. Stop and go traffic is miserable especially […]
One of the regrets I have about my 98 year-old mother was her request several years back to go to Mexico to see a dear friend of hers, Martha Gottfried. Martha passed away before we could get Mom a passport so they could get back to share a last few moments together. Both had been […]
Last week one of the truly beautiful ladies—sweet, kind, pretty and polite—called me over to her table in the dining room. She still has all her marbles and is only in residence because her husband has lost most of his. “Do you want to sign a petition with us?” she asked. “What on earth for?” […]
“I haven’t seen your son lately,” I said to Lady J. “Ugh,” she says. “I don’t want him around.” “Oh,” I said, looking startled. I waited for the rest of the story. Of course, it came. For several weeks Lady J had suffered from a relapse of some sort and her son had taken a […]
I spent the day yesterday “hunkered down” as those of us in Hurricane country call it with my 98-year-old mother in the safety and comfort of @CarriageInnHuntsville. I had not thought about the safety of the elderly until now. Mom’s Residential Facility sits high on one of Huntsville’s seven hills, secure and safe from flooding. […]
We need a seating chart to designate the participants. Perhaps the seating is based on their faculties. And new arrivals need to know. I whispered the advice over and over as Mom and I approached the table “Don’t sit there! Don’t sit there! Please don’t sit there!” Lady O, a new arrival, was about to […]
After a day of enjoying a Genealogy conference at our local library, I returned to check on Mom. I hoped that she had made her way to lunch or perhaps gotten out of her room to enjoy the Banana Split Social in the Ice Cream parlor. But no, no such luck. “I’ve been so lonely,” […]