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Please bear with me...
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...if I am slow to respond, or seem to vanish for a couple days at a time.
I moved my mother into assisted living this weekend, and it is not an easy or happy process for anyone involved. -- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak. 
I'm sure we'll all understand.
On that note, you have my condolences. You're right- that's never easy. I hope her new place takes good care of her, and that you get to visit often. My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours. I've been writing a bit. 
Take the time you need, Bob. We'll be here when you get back.
-- Rob Kelk "Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of the same sovereign, servants of the same law." - Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012 
Whatever time you need, family has priority.
----- Will the transhumanist future have catgirls? Does Japan still exist? Well, there is your answer.
Offering up a quiet prayer for her.
-- Sucrose Octanitrate. Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
Same here, I already know how these things are. My own family was fortunate enough to find a good hospice care service for my grandmother that would work in the patient's own home.
Thanks, everyone. This whole process has been fraught with anxiety and the occasional misstep here and there, and I'm really, really hoping Mom acclimates to the place. If only so I can sleep a whole night without waking up at 3 in the morning and not get back to sleep because I'm worrying about something. (Case in point, yesterday. I was so burnt that my boss sent me home at 10:30 in the morning and told me to go back to bed when I got there.)
-- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak. 
Here's hoping things get easier for all involved soon.
This first week has been pretty rocky. Mom has serious anxiety problems -- she's always been high strung -- and while my sister crashed with her for the first night, she was alone the second and third nights and refused to sleep at all; she ended up briefly in a state of sleep-deprivation psychosis until we could get her to take a Xanax (she has a prescription for use "as needed", boy was it). When it kicked in, she fell asleep almost immediately. Since then she seems to be improving in general -- I got a very cheery, almost chirpy phone call from her yesterday afternoon -- but I've also realized that she's done a very good job of hiding the degree of her dementia until now. Without her home of sixty-plus years and her aide and her daily routine to anchor her it's pretty obvious now -- it's a good thing we got her into the residence when we did; we might not have noticed how far gone she was until something tragic happened.
-- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak.
I'm sorry for you, Bob, I really am. I've had some bad experiences myself when I was living with my uncle and grandmother when the dementia started hitting her pretty bad. I'd be up early so I can get into work, and my grandmother would wander out, utterly befuddled because she didn't know who I was or whose house she was in... which is kinda shocking because she's lived in that house for more than sixty years! I can't imagine how far back her mind had gone to not recognize a home she's been in for that long, but there it was.
Before she gets too far, you may want to make a habit of bringing in a digital audio recorder with you when you visit her... and try to get her talking about the good old days. In this modern age, it's something I'd stick in my digital 'scrap book'. 
It would have the advantage as well that she could have a library of audio or video files handy. If she had a section of the apartment with a handful of recordings, and a note in her own hand explaining that she has memory issues, and to review if she needs it... It just seems to me that it might help, if she can leave audio notes to herself.
My grandmother had similar issues in her last few years of life, and it got me to thinking. If or when anything like that happened to me, I'd probably want to get into the habit of making a video file, so that if I woke up one day, didn't know where I was, but had obviously left notes for myself, that would help re-center my mind. Just a thought. --- Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do.
The sad thing about my mother is that for as far back as I can remember, she has had virtually no interests or hobbies. The closest I recall is her watching soap operas in the 1960s, when I was a kid. But she doesn't read, she has no TV shows she watches (other than the news), she almost never went to movies with us when my sister and I still lived at home (the last I can remember is Paper Moon in 1973). She only had videos on hand to entertain my father, and after he passed away she got rid of both the VCR and the DVD player.
And she continues to profess no interest in any of these things. I have no idea how she gets through a day. -- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak. |
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