The last few days were pretty good. Mom made me laugh quite a bit. She's in so much pain and her stomach is doing summersaults, but she's been going with me and even cracking jokes. She complains THE WHOLE TIME. Yesterday, I lost her in Costco for 20 minutes. I had to pick up some medication and she had to use the restroom, so when she was done, she was to meet me at the pharmacy. But she forgot, so while I sat on the bench near the pharmacy, waiting for her, she was wandering up and down aisles trying to find me. She got distracted by a box of dried fruit and thought I might have used the restroom, so she took the fruit in there. So lucky she didn't get busted by an employee. A few employees helped me find her, and she didn't know what my problem was since she thought she was shopping fine on her own. She was so sweet, though, picking out gifts and making yummy desperate noises at foods she can no longer eat due to the salt content. I almost snapped a pic of her when she picked out a lovely bouquet of flowers for the caregiver.
Today we went shopping for the kids gifts. We can't spend a lot this year, which makes Mom so sad, but that's not what the holidays are about anyway. I keep reminding her. We picked out some cute stuff the kids will love and kept it low cost. She was so distracted BY EVERYTHING in Target today. Usually, Mom pushes the cart to help her stay balanced and act as a walker, but she can't push by herself. I pull near the front on the side. I kept turning around to find I'm pulling the cart by myself and Mom's wandered into another aisle. I really want to put a leash on the woman. She wants every toy for the kids, checks every price, looks at every food product for at least 3 minutes at a time....she kept saying that this was like a field trip for her because she never gets to go shopping anymore. She hates that it's so hard on her to just walk around - she tires so easily. But she did it, and she got out of the house, and she likes the toys we got the kids. And she made me laugh quite a bit with the weird crap she says. She was really into those stocking stuffer dollar sections. Hahaha.
An anecdotal example of Mom's hilarity: On the way home, Mom was telling me about a book that her friend gave her. It has restaurant/fast food items listed with their sodium contents. She said, "I checked out that book, and BOY you wouldn't believe the CRAP we've been eating lately!" Made me laugh so hard. I still need respite (oh dear heaven, I need respite), but it's been easier the past few days. She's been *mostly* pleasant and we've been working on being nicer to each other.
I hate HE. It's so infuriating. Nobody knows about this illness, so I can't just tell people she has HE and be done with it. I have to give a mini bio lesson and description of symptoms. It's so much like dementia that I just tell people that's what she has when I don't have time to outline the difference. She hates that I say that...it's like a personal insult to suggest she has dementia. I think it's fear of losing her mind and herself...but either way, when I'm looking for her in a large warehouse like Costco and describing her clothing and why I'd have to search for my 56-yo mother, it's 20x faster to say she has dementia than go through the lesson. It's something we end up fighting over. I'm tired of walking on eggshells and watching what I say in case it hurts her feelings. It is what it is. It's HE and mimics dementia to the point where I think it IS dementia. Dementia is like a symptom (a group of symptoms, really), but not an illness. The illness (the cause) can be a hundred different things, and in Mom's case, it's HE. I know it hurts her feelings, but I'm really very tired of the "make sure you tell people it's not from alcohol" and the "make sure they know it's not Alzheimer's" and the "but this time I'll remember" or "I'm not in denial about the HE, but it's not all in my head." This is life for us now. She forgets stuff. She gets confused and lost easily. She gets scared easily. She can't follow simple directions. That's not ideal, but it's life and we just have to accept that it happens from time to time, handle it when it happens, try to find ways to improve her cognitive function, and keep living through it. It's like she's lost her legs and is in a wheelchair but gets mad if you mention the chair or moving her or that she needs to use the big stall in the bathroom or that she can't reach stuff on the higher shelf. I guess the problem here is that I've accepted her loss of function and her diagnosis and she hasn't yet. I realize it's much easier for me to do that, and in her vulnerable state, it will take even longer for her to accept it. I'm trying to be patient, but she does start fights over things like me telling the employees that were helping me find her that she has dementia.
We can't change the medical group retroactively, so we don't have a doctor for Mom until January. The nice thing is that a lot of the specialists she sees now are in the new group, too, so she won't be changing *too* much. We will still lose her liver specialist because he's moving to another hospital and it's much too far for her to make that drive. But another one will come in and hopefully be just as awesome. If not, I have a great referral to one south of us. She's still having problems eating and is experiencing a lot of nausea. She keeps shaking and says her bones are frozen, and then asks for ice water. I give her cold water, but I'm not giving her ice when she's literally shivering and says she can't get warm and turns up the heater. Otherwise, things are the same. Keep on truckin'.
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