thanks to all

Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes for my 2 girls. Fascinating to hear that another Noble is having a 29th birthday! I took time this morning to give each horse a special grooming that including mane & tail trim and show sheen shine, extra currying to get out the loose hair, and for Sailor, cleaning in an - ahem - intimate area that gets a little cruddy during spring heat. By some miracle, both mares stood quietly and let me work on them, even though their morning hay was waiting outside.

My mom's situation is still a mess, and now the insurance company has stopped paying. So they are pushing us toward a nursing home, even though we feel the memory care center is better suited to her. My brother and I are feeling crushed by the system, and it's hard to keep the will to fight. They have upped her meds and she is hallucinating again. Unbelievable.

I will be writing a book about this experience, and think I have enough publishing contacts to get it published. My new motto: It's never too late to become what you might have been. (George Eliot)

Happy Birthday Noble and Sailor!

Almost forgot - Noble had a big day on April 18 - she turned 29! She's still looking good and as feisty as ever, and still very much the "boss mare." We celebrated Sailor's birthday too. I don't have the exact date, except that she was born in April 1998. So we had 2 birthday girls, who enjoyed a nice sunny day.

Still living at the hospital

Well, it's April 20, and unbelievably, my mom is still in the hospital. It has been such a roller coaster ride. The day of my last post, the doctor tried a new med, zyprexa, and she was out, unconscious for a full 2 days. So no more of those anti-psychotic meds. She has had good days, and some really bad ones, like today. But overall, she is walking like crazy, eating well, and attending to her personal needs herself. I think the stress of being in the hospital for so long is making her very antsy, and causing acting-out behavior. Her anxiety really increases by late afternoon. She can be coherent, in the here and now, but a few minutes later be convinced it's 20 years ago, or that we are at a party. Today she thought she went to a wake. The assisted living facility she had been living at came to evaluate her last week and said she was fine to return. But the director (who is a sick b**tch) sent an evaluation to the hospital saying mom needed full nursing care. It's obvious they didn't want her back and didn't have the guts to say so. We have refused to pay them any money for April, because 1) mom wasn't there; and 2) they basically threw her out.
So today my brother and I went to look at a nice "memory care" facility that specializes in dementia. It's beautiful, and offers so much more than where she was staying, and the staff understands the needs of someone like this and how to deal with them. We still have to check out a couple other places, but I was very impressed with the one we saw today, and it is very centrally located for family and friends.

Somehow I have managed to work through this (going to hospital in Saratoga, 45 minute drive, every day), but I am very behind in my work. Just a little more stress for the pile! I am so looking forward to the day when my biggest worry is what I am going to wear to work.

A miracle

After several days of hell in which it was unsure if we would get my mom functional again, I walked into her hospital room today and was shocked. She was sitting up in bed with her glasses on, and looked at me and said "Linda - where have you been?" I was stunned. I walked over to her and hugged her with tears streaming. She was animated and coherent. What a miracle. Yesterday the doctor was saying he wasn't sure if we would ever get her back from the state she had been drugged into. But I know she still needs some more time to clear the Haldol from her system, and there will be setbacks. Apparently she was irritable in the morning and threw a cup of water at a nurse. And she did have some confusion - she thought I was pregnant! I had to tell her no, at my age, I would make the newspapers if that happened.

But overall, the change from yesterday is so dramatic my family is thrilled. I hope this maintains. She was asking when she would be going home, but she has to have physical therapy just to walk again. She's been bedridden since Sunday, which is a long time for an elderly person. The other problem is where she is going to go, since we will not bring her back to the assisted living center that sent her down this hellish path. My mom is a true survivor. What she went through, many elderly people would not survive. And I am going to be hypervigiliant that this does not happen again. If I see any indication of a med causing an unsatisfactory effect, I will demand to have it taken away.

I'm hoping tonight that I will sleep for the first time in several nights. I am so exhausted, I couldn't work today. So I'm going to get ready for bed!