Muscles


 
Mom gets re-evaluated on Thursday for moving to her memory care home.  She's much stronger now - yesterday she stood up on her own and transferred to the bed from her wheelchair. I stood by just in case, but she did it all on her own! That ability to help shift herself from bed to wheelchair, wheelchair to toilet and so on is one of the criteria for being in this home.  
 
That's the good news - the not so great news is that she's shifted her paranoia to the staff at the rehab (from Dad).  She was complaining about Nick (her therapist) "sabotaging" her by setting her machine at a higher level than she can do. He's just seeing what she CAN do and making adjustments from there. Proof of his method is her ability to transfer now and move herself up in the bed. But no, he's "sabotaging" her and I can't convince her otherwise.  
 
She has also been refusing to take some of the medications when brought to her, arguing that the dosage is wrong or that "she doesn't take that".  Three months ago, she stopped taking her Aricept daily, convinced it was a once a week thing ("only on Thursdays!").   I think that may have been what precipitated the sudden decline and I don't know if we'll ever get that back. The nurse told me she was arguing with her about it, so I found that bottle, took it in to show Mom and explained that when Colleen gave her that pill (I showed her the pill) that she needed to take it. So far, so good, but I'm not seeing any improvement. The 2-3 month slippage may be permanent.  Mom also seems less interested in things now, so sometimes conversation goes nowhere. I'm not sure if she's refusing her anti-depressant. She was for a while, and as you know, it takes a while to kick in.

Yeah... that's kind of the way things are these days. Cognitively, things probably won't get better. but her body can!

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