calherewecome

Time for an update. Saints be praised! Mary went to church with us on Sunday. For the past 6-8 weeks, Mary has begged off on going to Church on Sunday and Bible study on Wednesday morning. Every time we suggested that she get dressed and go to church, she told that she was too dizzy and too tired.

So what’s different today? Well, for one thing we stopped one of her meds that was prescribed by her neuro doctor. She had an appointment with him a week or so ago, and we brought up our suspicion that it was making the dizziness worse. So the neuro doc agrees and takes her off of the med. I forget the name, but it doesn’t matter.

So she got hugs all around from the folks who hadn’t seen her in a while including Pastor Jacques. I think she enjoyed the attention. After the service we went out for lunch at the Gaffey Street Diner (one of our usual restaurants). Mary had some clam chowder. She pretty much finished the bowl.

We have Mary using the walker full time now. She grumped about it at first but she has gotten used to it. I think that she has come to understand that if she doesn’t use it she would likely fall again. Stowing the walker is a PITA when getting her into the car, but we deal with it.

A couple of weeks ago, Paula and I got away for a weekend up in the Bay area (Oakland) for an OES reception. We had our usual care-givers from CarenetLA to look after Mary. It was nice to get away for the weekend.

We’ll see if we can get her to Bible study this week.

No pictures today.

It’s been a tough week. On Sunday, Paula and I went to the Chili Cook-off at lodge. Mary decided that she didn’t want to go. Okay, no problem. When we got home at about 8 pm we got Mary up to offer to have some dinner and watch the TV news.

Paula and I both had sat down. Mary gets up from the dining room table and heads for her room. Then she had a whopping dizziness episode and falls on her back. We helped her sit up and we tried to take stock of her condition. She was conscious and didn’t seem to have broken anything. We decided to not call the EMT’s and wait for the morning to call her primary care doc.

So on Monday morning, Paula makes an appointment with her primary at 11:45. Her doctor ordered X-rays. X-ray showed fractured rib (non-displaced). He gave her some kind of strap to help stabilize her rib cage and wrote her an Rx for pain med.

At this point, Mary is noticeably weaker and noticeably disoriented. Paula has been sleeping on the extra bed in her bedroom. She has needed help sitting up and getting up out of bed. We are insisting that she use her walker rather than her cane when walking around our condo. She fought us for a little bit but has come around on the issue. We told her if you don’t use the walker you WILL fall again and next fall will kill you. So she’s on board with walker.

Last night she got up at about midnight when Paula was about to go to bed and she asked “Is it time to get up?”. Paula gives her a big sigh. No.  Paula gave her a bottle of Ensure and put her back to bed.

One good thing happened this week. Her lawyer dropped by yesterday with his notary in tow to sign her new estate docs. She managed to get it done, but she had trouble. Lawyer says to her “put the number 4 here (between August and 2016), initial here and sign here.” She had trouble with those simple directions. Eventually, we got through all of the paper work along with notary stamps. Lawyer will make copies for his file and call us to pick up the originals. We breathed a big sigh of relief to get this task done.

So the docs include updated will, durable power of attorney, health care power of attorney and add Paula and my names to her family trust.

So to finish off the week, we took Mary to get her hair done. Paula got the car and meet us outside the elevator. I started to walk with Mary to the elevator. The distance from our front door to the elevator is about 25 yards. She almost couldn’t make it. Navigating with the walker is very tough for her. While she was getting her hair done, we did the grocery shopping.

So here’s where we stand. At the end of the week she is noticeably weaker, noticeably frailer and much less aware of whats going on in the world. We’re beginning to feel that the end is near. Her internal fuel gauge is pointing at a big red “E”. But then again she might bounce back. We need to make another appointment with her neuro doc to talk about one of her meds. We feel that might be making the dizziness worse not better.

As it stands now, we feel we can’t leave her alone. One of us has to be here. We may start scheduling our caregivers for an evening every other week so that we can go out and have dinner and see a movie. Our goal all along has been to avoid putting her in a nursing home. But after this week, we beginning to think that maybe the time has come to look at that.

We are so looking forward to our trip up north on August 19 to get away for the weekend. We have scheduled our caregivers for the weekend.

Just a quick update. We have been trying to get Mary to drink more water. We kept telling her that it was good for her. It keeps all you plumbing working, I tell her. How do you know, you’re not a doctor? She would have none of it.

But we finally solved it. It seems that she had been watching the news about the water troubles in Flint, Michigan. And she thought that there was a problem with our tap water as well. We tried to convince her that our water here in LA was safe, but she wasn’t convinced.

So we ask her if she would drink bottled spring water. Why yes, she says. So we bring up a couple of bottles from the trunk of our Jeep. And she started drinking it. Success. She’s not up to the recommended 8 glasses a day yet, but getting better.

Of course, she doesn’t see me fill up the bottles from the water dispenser in our refrigerator. Need to know, and all that.

Now for a second story. We finally broke down and got a land-line. We did it for a couple of reasons. First, we got a note from AT&T that Mary’s phone would no longer be supported. She’s had it for a long time. Mary doesn’t use it much if at all. And AT&T has been charging her $50/month.

The phone is small and gets easily lost. A land-line allows us to get in touch with care givers while we are away, which we had trouble doing with Mary’s cell phone.

Time Warner is charging us $10 / month for a year. So I went to one of the local TW stores to pick up the modem and then to Costco to pick up a phone. I requested the phone # be unlisted. The phone number is available on a need to know basis. I don’t want to start getting telemarketing calls. Paula and my cell phones are still our primary method of contact.