Just Like Heather

This afternoon I was repeating to Mom something I had told her several times.  She noticed I was frustrated and said "just think of me like Heather."  Heather is my neice who is developmentally handicapped.  This brought a smile to my face. It does make me think about the way I respond.

Holiday Stress

"It's the most wonderful time of the year," normally but when things seem abnormal it is stressful.  Mom is exhibiting stressful behavior.  She has been making piles.  I have come into her room and on her bed are piles of paper she has collected.  She stacks them and then a few minutes later they are shifted into different piles.  When I got home on Friday, after a long day at work, she had  piles on her bed and related that she was trying to get her Christmas cards sent.  Mom was so anxious that I sat right down with her and helped her figure out who she wanted to send the cards to and what she wanted to write.  She had wrote one or two cards herself and said that she didn't think they made much sense.  I looked at them and could tell that she was having a hard time.  She wrote in a circular pattern around the edges of the card - not organized but in a random way.  She related that she was having a hard time writing.  So we sat and I wrote for her.  We got the cards done and this seemed to calm her down. 

Just like a baby

I took Mom to see the Christmas lights at the Mesa Temple tonight.  On our way home Mom said "this is like taking your baby for a ride to put them to sleep."  We laughed but it is a little like walking backwards - now I am the parent and she is the child, in some ways, but she will always be my Mom. How I love her for all the times she must have put me to sleep and watched over me. She paid it forward. Now it is my turn to give back.

A New Adventure

Mom came to live with us about three weeks ago.  Our life has changed. We have been empty-nesters for the past six years.  Mom has Parkinson's Disease and I have brought her here to Arizona to see a neurologist at Barrows Neurological Institute.  Her appointment is at the end of this month.  We are excited to see if there are any things we can do to help her on this journey, to bring her more comfort and quality of life.  

This last year has brought a lot of changes in Mom's disease process.  She has more balance problems and has fallen several times, once with severe consequences - a broken wrist.  Mom's memory has been affected and makes it hard for her to remember when and which medications she should be taking. Mom has had Parkinson's now for the past eight to ten years and as I talk with mom we think that it could be possible that she started symptoms even earlier.  This past year she has had problems with hallucinations but we think we have that figured out - she can't take too much carbadopa-levadopa (Sinemet).  I now have taken over the responsibility, with the help of my husband, to make sure Mom takes the right amount at the right time.  This was hard on Mom - she didn't want to give up the ability to take her own medication.  She feels that she is losing her independence - and sadly, she is.  I try to explain that I am not doing this to take things away from her but to enable her to have less stress because remembering when and what to take was causing her a great deal of stress.  We have found that STRESS is one of the worst things that can happen to Mom because it brings on more anxiety which affects her Parkinson's symptoms causing confusion, increases nervousness, and depression.  

Sometimes Mom and I have to laugh at the funny things that happen.  She sometimes flings things around when she is talking with her hands, like, when she is eating and she has a spoon in her hand.  Don't get her excited because that spoon starts to fly around as she points and expresses herself.  She has a hard time holding her head up when I am doing her hair and she starts to laugh when I push her head back and then it goes right back to where it was and she says "I can't help it. It has a mind of its own."  We smile when she can't remember a word and we play a guessing game to figure out what she is trying to say.  We do try to make light of these changes.

I decided this would be a good way to keep family and friends up to date on Mom's progression and to give me a way to process my fears, frustrations, experiences, and to give a forum to you all to help me as I make this journey with my Mom.  We don't know what will come but we are hopeful that Mom will find some comfort with family and friends surrounding her and helping her on this road.