Sunday, November 22, 2020Tonight's picture was taken on November 19, 2008. It was six days after Mattie's major limb salvaging surgery. By that point, respiratory therapists were on the scene and worried that fluid would start collecting in Mattie's lungs. Mainly because he was unable to move and work the fluid out naturally. So at that point, we tried fun activities, like using crazy straws to get Mattie sucking in and blowing out! However, Mattie approached requests cautiously! Which was why I always did them first. You can see that Mattie was watching me as I was wearing this crazy straw that wrapped around my head and formed green straw glasses on my face.
Quote of the day: Today's coronavirus update from Johns Hopkins.
- number of people diagnosed with the virus: 12,224,322
- number of people who died from the virus: 256,741
Do you find this photo as funny as I do? Peter sent me this photo of Sunny tonight eating of all things...... asparagus. A first. Sunny is usually a protein dog! I frankly don't know what is funnier, the fact that he is eating a vegetable or his adorable eyes checking out the asparagus. Sunny is close to 70 pounds, but he is a gentle giant. For a larger size dog, I am always amazed with how gingerly he takes food from a human's hands!
Since I have gotten to Los Angeles, I have been getting up each morning at 5:30am. That may not sound like a big deal, unless you know me. I am NOT a morning person. The first day or so that I was here, I figured I was getting up so early because of the time difference. After all, 5:30am LA time is 8:30am East coast time.
Now I realize my issue isn't time zone related. I think it is simply stress. I am afraid that my alarm will go off in the morning and wake up my mom who is in the guest room, right next to my room. So subconsciously, I am waking up periodically during the night to check the time (like 2am, 4am, and then 5am), and I have managed each morning to wake up before my alarm goes off.
During the summer (June and August) when I came to Los Angeles, my focus was helping my dad. Now I am trying to help both my dad and my mom. Specifically trying to give my mom time to sleep longer in the morning, in order to regain her strength. My dad was hospitalized both in May and June. Between these hospitalizations and COVID lockdowns, his dementia went from the early to late stages of the disease. It has truly been unsettling to think that cognitive decline can happen overnight. I must admit that I held out hopes that my dad would bounce back to how he was functioning in May with time, better nutrition, family support and care. Unfortunately this hasn't happened and the reality has hit all of us. The mentally active and engaging person we once knew is no longer. Certainly he has moments or snippets of time during the day where he is more engaged and intact, but it doesn't last long.
I have a long fuse and a great deal of patience, however, the latest battle is the cell phone. My dad has a phone, yet keeping track of his phone is a nightmare. He typically keeps the phone in his pants pocket, but at times he does set it down and then panics..... where is the phone? In fact, he is in such a panic about the phone that you can visually see him searching his pockets and surroundings for his phone every five minutes. Literally today he asked me 20 times about where his phone was? I answered it calmly 20 times, but by the 21st time, I was on the edge. Mainly because he asked me less than five minutes before the exact same question.
There are things that have stabilized such as his eating and his irritable bowl syndrome. I celebrate all wins, and am happy that he appears to have a good appetite and isn't having stomach pains, that lead to explosive bouts of diarrhea. Which truly gave my dad and my MOM no quality of life. However, my days are VERY full here, as I move from one chore to the next and at times I feel like a 911 operator, dealing with one crisis after the other.
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