It Is Well

All is well here.  Mom has continued to have visitors - and lots of cards.  She likes it at Autumn, even says she can sleep there, which is saying a lot.

However, her mental state is little changed.  We thought we saw improvement over the weekend in that she was talking a bit slower and listening.  Dad says she seemed better today, also, but when I saw her this evening, she was still quite delusional about what people have said, how she is planning a big show of The Miller Sisters singing to promote Dan (Rachel's husband, the professional fighter), and I heard the whole litany of complaints about The James, Autumn healthcare, the food, the noise, etc. 

Noise in particular seems to be bothering her more.  It makes her head ache, she says.  And we're noticing a small tremor in her hands.  She is reading the newspaper well, though, even read it aloud to me, but fell asleep for about 2 minutes and then continued as if she didn't know she had.  She continues to scrawl mostly indecipherable notes about her plans on the margins of every scrap of paper, and continuously rearranges the things in her room.  She is very restless, physically, but emotionally seems at peace with her situation, other than complaining about lots of people and worrying that various ones are jealous.  That's a continual theme, that people are jealous of her.  Her "nightmare state" seems to have her dwelling on grudges, or worrying about confrontations, or grandly dealing with them.

I find myself just going with whatever she says, nodding, agreeing, supporting her and comforting her about the injustices she's worrying about even when I know she's spouting nonsense.  The few times I've tried to contradict her or set her straight on some facts or suggest that she ease up on certain topics that are upsetting Dad, she just gets belligerent with me, so it's no use.  I can't seem to get through to the Carol I knew very often now. 

Tonight I just sat doing a jigsaw puzzle with her and nodding and sympathizing.  It's ironic that she needs that because she's the first to spit out adages like "Don't sweat the small stuff" and "Get 'her done!", but then she doesn't listen to her own advice.  I'm not sure she's capable of consistency within a 10 minute conversation any more.  And she definitely contradicts herself many times in the course of a day, repeating the same stories, quoting people as having said something they didn't.  I know this for sure because I've been present at conversations that she later re-tells and I find out she's attributing things to me that I never said.  The conversation topic is correct, and the general gist, usually, but the details are turned around and re-arranged into a bit of a different story.

This stuff infuriates Dad, and he stomped out yesterday when she attacked him for the umpteenth time, and he stayed out for a while.  I've been getting through it OK most of the time and am able to go to Autumn with a happy heart.  The only time I wanted to fly away was on the drive home from the James Friday, and yesterday during church at Autumn.  The pastor was going on about the Anti-Christ, the Rapture, and The Second Coming, and I thought, "OK, I'm totally miserable now.  Completely and totally miserable."  But then Mom gave me something to worry about as she kept interrupting him to say, "Amen" and "Right!" and "Get 'er done!".  She never totally stopped him, though, but at the end got up and went to the podium to tell a story about Dad's corn crop this year, how he planted corn for grinding cornmeal and it got knocked down by the winds of a storm, then stood itself up again.  She thought it was an amazing miracle she wanted to share, which was nice, but the other members of the congregation were looking at her like, "Why is she up there talking to us?"  And they had good reason to be puzzled.  She just told that brief anecdote and stepped away again, so luckily I didn't have to intervene to drag her away from the bully pulpit!

She has been planning Amy's wedding in greater detail than Amy has, in some cases, but says "They're just ideas, she can take them or leave them."  But she tells them over and over to lots of people like they're fact and as though she has already talked with Amy about them.  So be aware that Amy's wedding may be very different from what Carol is "planning",

She has decided to have her own quilt show and have it be a benefit for Autumn healthcare, to buy a piano.  The one they have sounds awful.  So she has started planning that event.  In general, I've been supporting her notions, telling her I'll help her, but some of these are getting pretty impossible.  I don't look forward to having to tell her that we can't do it - or that she shouldn't do it in her current state of health.

She has become curious about why I'm not going back to Tucson and asks me every day about it.  I don't want her to see my staying as a sign that she's more critically ill than she knows, but I don't want to go back just now, either.


I'm not sure what to think.  We hoped that the Seroquel would give us a respite from her worst hyper-talk symptoms, and help her be more cognizant of her situation.  I'm not seeing that yet, really.  I'm a bit down, actually, starting to feel the confinement in this lifestyle here.

But...I have good things this weekend to look forward to. My friend Katrina in Columbus invited me to see David Tolley in concert, an excellent pianist and composer who goes to her church.  I'll go over Sunday and spend the night, come back after a bunch of errands and appointments on Monday.  Hopefully I'll get to visit Rachel and Dan and kids, too.