Lola Update 07/02/12

There's not a lot to update on Lola. Her condition is about the same. The heatwave has been keeping me inside, and I've been listening to a lot of books via audible.com.

An interesting point for anyone that has someone they're caring for that needs incontinence protection - brand names don't mean better. I'd been buying generic "Depends" for my mother and came across a sale for the real "Depends" at a better price. Thinking brand name means better, I scooped a bunch of them up. Big mistake. Don't go there.

Whereas using generic "Depends" putting Lola into two of them at night contained everything, using two brand name Depends made washing sheets mandatory every time. So before you buy large amounts, test each one.

So as you can guess, Lola has absolutely no toilet control. The best you can do is force her to go to the bathroom and change into dry clothes when she gets up in the morning. Yes, force, because her mind doesn't recognize that she's sitting in what her body has processed. She can stay up later than I can and get up earlier than I can when she's not in a fugue state.

The fugue state takes her by stages/days. For days, she will stay in bed continually unless I force her to get up and come out of her room and eat. Then for days she will stay up until after 1 a.m. and be up and rifling though photographs by 8 a.m.

Mother still recognizes me. It seems that's about all she recognizes, though. She's consistently reached the stage that she does not know what food is on the plate that is set before her. That's a good thing in that idiosyncrasies she had are no longer valid. Like, she wouldn't eat hot chicken before but now scarfs it up. She used to only eat crackers and ice cream, and now she eats whatever is put in front of her. She used to say she couldn't eat salad, and now says it's delicious. It doesn't matter much what I offer, she eats it. A year ago, she was a tyrant regarding what she'd eat.

The best I can say is that I don't know what life would be like if we didn't have cable and the old movie channel. It consumes her. Her mind is gone. She has no clue where the bathroom is or her bedroom is or if she's eaten or not. As long as the TV is on the old movie channel she is captured.