Tonight's picture was taken in April of 2007. Mattie was five years old and my boys were outside on our balcony, which overlooked the Kennedy Center. This balcony view was a part of our life for twenty years and when I think of it, I naturally think of Mattie and when we were a family of three.
Quote of the day: Affirmations are our mental vitamins, providing the supplementary positive thoughts we need to balance the barrage of negative events and thoughts we experience daily. ~ Tia Walker
The memory care center gave my dad a Mini Mental Status Exam and a Geriatric Depression Screening test today. The Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) is a tool that can be used to systematically and thoroughly assess mental status. It is an 11-question measure that tests five areas of cognitive function: orientation, registration, attention and calculation, recall, and language. The maximum score is 30. Do you want to know that my dad got a 28 out of 30. Meaning that he has no mental impairment! HONESTLY! Are you kidding me????
They administered this same assessment to him at the hospital. I believe he is used to the questions because he has taken many of them. They are a known quantity to him. I don't care what these assessments say! I am around him 24/7, and he is significantly impaired. A brief screening can't possibly capture the level of impairment. They also administered a depression screening and he scored a zero! No depression at all. That doesn't surprise me at all. My dad is happy, it is just the rest of us caring for him and experiencing his significant decline which is emotionally overwhelming.
In many cases though my dad's responses on the depression screening are a riot. One question asks: Do you feel that you have more problems with memory than most? It is a YES or NO response. My dad picks neither, but writes a sentence next to the question that says, "I don't think I can answer, since I don't know MOST people."
Putting that aside, the top of the depression assessment says.... "Score 1 point for each bolded answer. A score of 5 or more suggests depression." Do you see a problem with this?! I think even if one has a memory issue, one can read. One can understand that this screens for depression and one can also understand how one would score high for depression by circling the BOLDED responses! I would invalidate this assessment right away! So I looked it up. The center doesn't give participants the actual assessment, but instead asks them to complete responses on the scoring sheet! This is a BIG problem. If interested, check out this link to see what I am talking about. The first page is the actual assessment (which is what should have been given to my dad) and the second page is the scoring sheet (which is what my dad was actually given).
Meanwhile, Peter contacted Sunny's surgeon. She performed two knee surgeries on Sunny in a two year time period. We told her about Sunny's latest sonogram and the fact that two big masses and swollen adrenal glands. We also explained that we can't get Sunny in to see an oncologist for three weeks. We talked to her last night, and tomorrow I will be taking Sunny in at 7:30am to meet her and undergo more testing. Dr. Hawthorne is an amazing vet and Sunny's new vet could learn a lesson or two from her. Unfortunately Dr. Hawthorne is a specialist so Sunny can't see her on a regular basis. But we love her, she gives her families her cell phone number, and actually advocates for her patients. What a concept. Good thoughts for Sunny tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment