8-21-2021 Saturday

 (Marilyn)

Today covered almost every emotion in the book.  (When you read this, keep in mind that Linda rarely can attribute the correct name to the correct person.)

I got there around 9:00, as usual.  She was eating a bit of breakfast, but not enough.  I brought with me my wedding pictures (I thought she would enjoy seeing them) and also a quilt that was given to Marshall when he got diagnosed with cancer.  Some neighbors made it for him.  

She loved looking at the wedding pictures but had a hard time identifying who was who.  But there were a bunch of pictures of Mother and she lingered over those and loved seeing them.  So I left them in her room.

When I gave her the quilt I told her that Marshall got the quilt when he was dying of cancer. And she said, "Marshall is dead??"  I said yes. She said he couldn't be dead because he was just there and then she had a complete meltdown, crying and saying she needed to talk to Tricia.  So I put Tricia on FaceTime and Linda was really crying and saying, "Marshall can't be dead.  He was here. He was just here."  So Tricia kept talking to her and getting her to calm down and then Tricia said, "Ed and I will come and see you tonight."  Linda said, "Ed??"  So after an hour of emotions, it turns out that Linda thought Ed was Marshall so she assumed that Ed had died overnight.  It was awful.

Then after we resolved that issue, she looked at the quilt and had to absorb the fact that Marshall was also dead.  However, she called him Larry.

I have developed a new approach to Linda's insistence that she can walk by herself so she should be eligible to go home.  When she says that now, I say, "That's great, Linda, show me."  And she makes a small effort but is not able to lift herself up from the wheelchair. So she says, "Maybe later."

Then there are the times when she says, "Well, I'm going to head home now ... see you later," I say, "Okay, see you later."  She rolls the wheelchair to the door of her room and pauses a minute and then she comes back.  

She still insists she won't cooperate with physical therapy because she doesn't want to.  She has never spent any time exercising, so this is Linda being Linda.  But how sad that it is keeping her from getting to a position where she could be discharged.

Today was incredibly emotional so she was exhausted and asked to be put back in her bed.  As soon as the nurses got her situated back in bed, she fell asleep.  But not before asking me to put Marshall's quilt on her and saying, "Thank you SO much for this quilt.  I love it."

Tricia and Ed (a/k/a Marshall, a/k/a Larry) will go see Linda tonight.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

12-25-2022 Merry Christmas to all!

Image
(Tricia) Since Linda came home from the hospital in November, it has been much quieter than it was before she went in.  No more physical therapy, very few nursing visits. Hospice started up again two weeks ago, but Linda has turned down most services (such as the bath aide and chaplain). She has been telling us that she wants to rest, so we are giving her that. She does get up in her wheelchair almost every day, which at least gives her a change of scenery. Last Tuesday, we did take Linda to a previously scheduled doctor's appointment with a neurologist specializing in cognitive issues such as brain injury and dementia, at a practice is called the St. Louis Center for Cognitive Health. I almost canceled the appointment, because I didn't think much would come of it. But this was an appointment I had rescheduled after canceling one in July the last time she was in hospice (and I had made that appointment in March-- the joys of American healthcare). When I canceled the July appoin...
Read more

3-24-2023 "Never Roger, always Ed!"

Linda's brain injury has brought with it a host of maddening symptoms, but one of the most prevalent is that it has made her not just unable to remember people's correct names, but at times seemingly unwilling to. This has been especially true for Ed's name.  For some reason, her brain is convinced that there are actually two males living in this house--one named Roger and one named Ed. When we ask her what each one looks like, she points to Ed and says, "They both look like him!"  And, of course, when we ask the obvious follow-up question, "Then why do you think they're two people?" she will respond with some version of "Their hair is different" or "They wear different clothes." We don't know where this comes from. We don't think she's connecting Ed to her neighbor in Mountain View or our cousin in Indianapolis (hello to both of you!).  But the mix-up has been there since she first started talking after coming out of ...
Read more

10-4-22 Quick update

(Tricia) I just wanted to post an update about how things have gone since Linda was discharged from hospice last week. We took Linda in to see Dr. Kevorkian on Saturday, and he decided he wanted to wait to remove the drain in her right side until she was at home and lying down. So, he's actually going to make a home visit this Thursday for the drain removal. He also has now established the start of insurance-covered PT -- they will be coming in to evaluate Linda on Friday. This is bittersweet, because we really like the private pay therapist who has been working with Linda to this point. She has helped Linda improve considerably, and she seemed genuinely sad today when I told her about the switch.  But I am having her come at least one more time (on Thursday). From there, we'll see how St. Luke's Home Health's PT services work for Linda.  Today was a PT day as well, and it went very well. Linda sat up on the side of the bed with some assistance for 10 minutes--a record!...
Read more