Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Lola Update 07/18/12

Lola is just about holding steady. She's been setting into a pattern of going about a week that she gets up on her own and a week of my having to force her to get up. Last week she would have stayed in bed 24/7 if I had let her. The last 2 days, she's gotten up on her own by about 1-2 p.m. The week before, she was up at 7:30 a.m.

I've become used to having to wash a load of pajamas every 2 days. Even with putting 2 depends on her at night, the incontinence has reached a point of wet PJs at least 2 times a day. I have to admit that trying to get her to the bathroom in time to catch the incontinence has failed. I've given up on it. She has no sense of needing to go. Trying to get her to go every 2 hours or so when she's up to prevent accidents became more of a burden than just tending to her in the morning and evening. My sense of when she may need to go is far off. It irritates her when I badger her. It's simply easier to clean up.

A few days ago, she did her normal staying up watching TCM until I forced her to bed at 2:00 a.m., and I awoke to her standing in the front door at 8:30 a.m. with a shirt on and nothing else. She'd left a trail of poop behind her on the carpet. 

I've given up on trying to keep any kind of schedule with her. Both of us are night owls, so her staying up late isn't as trying as her getting up after only 5-6 hours of being in bed. Her sense of time is shot. Mine isn't. If she stays up until 2 a.m., I need 8 hours of sleep. If she stays up until 2 and gets up at 7:30, I'm shot.

Her appetite is still hearty, and she's gotten over all the picky stuff she was in when I first came here. She eats absolutely anything and everything that I put in front of her. This is great because it's solved the constipation problems she had when I first got here. I feed her salads now, and she loves them. Getting fiber into her is no problem now that she'll eat something besides ice cream and crackers.

She still recognizes most people that stop by and visit. It may take her a few minutes to place them, but she does place them. The only time she doesn't recognize people, me, is right after she's been woken up. She's forgotten her husband. That's hard for me to understand. Absolutely no person on the face of the earth was more important to her than Joe, and now she's almost totally forgotten him. She's even stopped obsessing over the photographs of them when they were young.

About once a month she asks me if Joe's dead. It's not the horrible experience it was 5 months ago for either of us. Then it seemed awful to me to have to tell her husband was dead again and again. Now it barely ripples her pond, and that takes the trauma out of it for both of us.

I still don't know what is up with old people and their false teeth and with Lola's obsession with throwing stuff. I can get her bottom dentures out of her every night and put them in a denture cup. If I forget, there's no telling where I find them. Her uppers are a different story. They usually stay in for about 3 days at a time. Used to be she'd wrap them in a tissue and stick it in the tissue box - not put them in the denture cup by her bed. Now she's taken to throwing them. I find them on the floor in various places in her bedroom. Sheesh.

The throwing stuff is getting old, too. The other day I served her a salad with croutons instead of crackers. Big mistake. She picked out every crouton and threw it on the floor. Nope, there was no sitting them on the side of the dish, or even pushing them off onto the TV tray. They had to be thrown on the floor. Joy, joy. Picking up soggy croutons from the carpet.

That goes hand in hand with the having to place every dish from every meal on a side table instead of leaving them on her food tray. She eats nearly every bite of food except for croutons and beef. Then every plate and glass gets set on a side table, and her food TV tray is immaculate. Never mind that the sweaty glass has been set in the middle of her precious photographs.

Ah, well, such is life now. It's 2:30 a.m., and time to make her go to bed. That means following behind her as she creeps to the bathroom, and directing her the 10 steps to the bathroom, which she doesn't recognize from her bedroom. Then telling her every step on how to take off her urine soaked clothes, cleaning her, and putting each foot into her underwear and dry PJs. Directing her the 5 steps from the bathroom to her bedroom, assuring she gets in bed without throwing the pee pad onto the floor, and covering her with blankets. Then she'll tell me how much she loves me, even though she hasn't spoken 5 words to me all day long.

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