I drove over to visit Mom and Dad today. It’s 3 - 3.5 hours each way.
Dad is holding his own. We’ll file for his Long Term Care benefit for April 20 - 30 (when he was eligible)this week, and then monthly after that. I thought today he might want to move into a bigger room since the LTC benefit is reimbursement of whatever he spends, but I didn’t say anything yet.
Mom? She’s alive but gone. She doesn’t recognize us and seems to have a movie playing in her head that she’s staring at. It’s a pleasant movie (she smiles vacantly), so there’s that. Dad said she can’t see well enough to feed herself and thinks we need to have her eyes checked. That’s not going to help.
I can only hope the end is near for her.
B
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Mom? She’s alive but gone.
My heart breaks for you.
=sheila
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Mom? She’s alive but gone. She doesn’t recognize us and seems to have a movie playing in her head that she’s staring at.
My dad went goofy in his late 70’s. Lived to 94, thankfully in a “retirement home”. I learned what is meant by the expression “second childhood”. Some times he would be very childish, singing dirty little songs from his childhood. My brother was depressed because Dad wasn’t able to recognize him. To make it worse, he always recognized me, brightened up and greeted me with the childhood name I had given myself (at age 2) because I couldn’t pronounce my real name. (I suspect my beard helped him remember me.) I lived 1500 miles away, and only came to visit maybe once a month, while bro was relatively local and came often.
Dad liked to play dominoes, and played well right to the end.
Senility is cruel.
CNC
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I can only hope the end is near for her.
Uhhh…you can hasten it by refusing all non-palliative medical care, including vaccines.
That’s what I’m doing now, but I confess I couldn’t bear not to vax DH against covid as the end-game is so terribly grim.
However he no longer accepts needles without a fight so no more vaccinations. He tested positive for covid last Saturday and I did not ask for Paxlovid for him, even though I took it myself last week. I do get his teeth cleaned as avoiding painful dental work is a plus, but I don’t know if he’ll tolerate his next dental cleaning & exam anyhow.
He is on several meds, but they’re really for my benefit (minimizing dementia behaviors, enabling him to pee despite an enlarged prostate. Perhaps I should skip the BP medication?)
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