Now Playing -
Designer's Challenge, on HGTV.
Now Eating -
Karamel Sutra & Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream.
Now Feeling -
tired.
Now Tweeting
- Melanie
My jaw is pulled so tight I fear it will snap and slingshot my chin out the back of my head.
And how's things by you?
So yeah, it was definitely some kind of stroke. I went to see her on Saturday, and the right corner of her mouth was drooping a little, and she kept wiping at her right eye. She smiled when I came into the room. Which, of course, killed me. I sat on her bed and stroked her hair and held her hands. And hummed quietly to her.
She speaks in short, generalized sentences. Aphasia is setting in. She seems to recognize people, but not their relationship to her. She has to have something in her hands at all times; a slip of paper, a teabag, a piece of surgical tape, her rosary. Perseveration. She's having trouble eating and feeding herself. She hasn't been out of bed to walk since she got there. She had a PT evaluation today, and they were very concerned about that. She'll have a CAT scan tomorrow to see if they can figure out what's wrong with her legs.
But any thoughts of placement in a high-functioning assisted living unit are pretty much out the window. Luckily, the facility my SIL found has levels that go all the way to "at the nursing home's doorstep," so-to-speak. So there may still be a place for her there.
My SIL is planning to fly up this weekend to see her. Because she's been feeling uncomfortable about not having done so already. You know. In case. Anything. Happens. ::spits between her fingers:: Pu-pu-pu.
So that's how things are over here. Huz is in tech week for a show, so I've been at the hospital the past two evenings so Minnie's not alone. Tonight I fed her some dinner, and then she dozed off. The nurses said she was quiet today, but I did manage to get some conversation out of her. If you could call it that.
Enough. I'm home now. Leave it behind, Mel.
But I can't. I hate it. I hate death. I hate the damn hospital, and it's actually a pretty nice hospital, as they go. I hate it all, every last goddamn bit of it. I hate it in the abstract, if that makes any damn sense at all, but I hate it as fiercely as if it were concrete. I don't believe I'm afraid of death. But I sure as hell hate the thought of it right now, the thought of watching people I love die. And watching other people I love lose themselves in grief. I hate that there's a woman in a hospital bed right now who cannot tell you what hurts, who cannot press the little button to call for help because she no longer knows what it is. I hate thinking how much my husband favors his mother's side of the family, and that Alzheimer's can be hereditary, and that what happened to his grandmother and now his mother could one day happen to him. I hate thinking that one day I may have to watch him watching me waste away in a hospital bed from some disease.
No-one should have to go through that. Or this.
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a very fine cat indeed - Friday, Jan. 17, 2014
happy new year! - Thursday, Jan. 24, 2013
this is where i am - Saturday, Jun. 30, 2012
this is how it is - Friday, Feb. 24, 2012
a very late last year's wrap-up - Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2012
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