Tonight's picture was taken in February of 2009. Mattie was home between hospital treatments and wanted to set up his tents and tunnels! So naturally we did and we created a way for these things to connect together. Mattie loved it. Despite his physical disability, he still had no problem scooting around on his backside!
Quote of the day: Today's coronavirus update from Johns Hopkins.
- Number of people diagnosed with the virus: 78,468,292
- Number of people who died from the virus: 935,174
I have to say that it isn't easy to see our parents (mine or Peter's) start giving things away. It is not like when I give things away, instead, their items are being dispersed because they understand with age that there is no purpose on holding onto things. Instead, they would prefer someone take the items, appreciate them, and put them to good use.
All I know is I have been seeing lots of things being donated since June of 2021, when we were digging out of our townhouse and trying to pack it up. Then I repeated the process in November/December 2021 with my parent's move from Los Angeles. Nonetheless, I find going through items and giving them away disconcerting. For me it is even worse, because I have no children to leave our items to and therefore, at times I wonder WHY HAVE ANYTHING!?
Back to my everyday reality. My dad's speech therapist has my dad doing daily logs to keep track of his entire day (morning, afternoon, evening, appointments, phone calls, therapy sessions and to do's). It is actually a very helpful exercise, and it further confirms how significant my dad's memory loss is! On an aside, I really had no idea that speech therapists work on cognition and memory loss, but they do! This morning, just like every morning, after breakfast, I had my dad pull out his log to complete it for the end of the day yesterday before starting the current day. When you ask my dad what he did yesterday he has NO idea. Frankly he has no idea what he did a minute ago. So he needs a lot of support and coaching through the log.
We have been watching the TV series, Heartland. It has 14 seasons and counting. We are in season 14, and my parents have watched the show from its beginning. Therefore, you would think the characters would be familiar to my dad. This morning I asked him about the Heartland episode we saw last night. He had no idea! I mean NONE! I then asked him about certain characters and he did not know who I meant. So I went over three characters with him.... a mother (Lou), daughter (Georgie), and the daughter's boyfriend (Quinn). My dad couldn't understand that Lou was Georgie's mom. He understood that Georgie was Lou's daughter, but he couldn't go the other way. In fact, he couldn't keep the three people straight at all, so I pulled out a piece of paper and I started a family tree. That seemed to help.
What gets me laughing is when I ask my dad what he did yesterday..... his first response will be.... I went walking. What is hysterical about this is he rarely walks unless prodded to move his body. This is not necessarily dementia related, this is historically who he is! But I find it fascinating that in his mind, he is constantly walking and exercising. When I laugh, he thinks I am laughing at his memory loss. I correct him that I am in NO WAY laughing at that, but I just find it funny that he perceives himself doing all this walking. His therapists want him walking once an hour! Ridiculous for a person like him, but I just bought him a pedometer today and I think it will help him see his level of activity or LACK THERE OF, by seeing his daily step counts.
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