The next morning...

We checked on PG this morning to make sure that her fall last night didn't produce any other injuries that she couldn't tell us about last night. She was kinda confused, but after we got her changed and up in a chair, she seemed a little bit better (she was seeing birds in the room???). I changed the sheets on her bed, put her dentures in her mouth so that we could understand what she was saying, and brushed her hair, and put her glasses on her...hmmm, then she looked more like herself and not like an insane asylum patient. She had a bruise on one knee, but she seemed to be able to move everything ok (for her).

Then, she wanted to demonstrate to us how the physical therapist taught her to get from the wheelchair to her bed. Well, she essentially dove from the chair into the bed. I jumped closer and pulled her up into bed....MAN....SSIL just looked at me with shock on his face and said, "That's NOT how the physical therapist showed her how to get in bed."

Before we took her to the dining room for lunch, she asked me if I'd seen the pretty night gowns that SSIL bought her;o I said that I had and asked why isn't she wearing them instead of her old house dress? She said that they are so pretty that she doesn't want to mess them up! Aye-yi-yi!!

It had to happen sooner or later...

SSIL and I took the new commuter train into the city today to play for the day, and after a good day and just about ready to head back toward the train station, I get a call from an aide at PG's assisted living. PG has fallen and cut her hand--"It may need stitches, but I've got the bleeding stopped." So, I say that it'll take a while for us to get there, but we're on our way. We arrive at PG's room and she's sideways in the bed. I ask what she's doing and she looks kinda crazy. I check out her hand and it's just a skin tear--nothing to stitch--but some skin is missing. SSIL and I straighten her in bed, SSIL stays with her while I head to the store to get a special bandage that I think will be convenient for her...three stores later I finally find something close to what I want and return to put it on her hand. SSIL quietly tells me that she says that "the wall pulled her into it". He kinda laughed and said, "come on". She got mad at him (w-o-w) and kinda yelled at him, "you don't know!" So, I encouraged her to ask the aides for help for every little thing she needs and that the aides are just outside her room--not far away. She replies that they're having a party out there. She tells SSIL that I don't understand, that those girls don't come right away..."No duh!" We've been trying to teach her patience for almost two years now. Attention! All old farts out there in the world: No one will magically appear as soon as you push the button--it'll take a minute or two, so hold your pants on!!!!!!!

So after thinking about it for several hours now, I've informed SSIL that tomorrow we will buy some "pull-ups", and tell PG that if the aide takes too long, "go" in the pull-up (it's safer that the waste paper basket), and then when the aide arrives she can help her...it's better than falling and killing yourself!!

Looking on the bright side...PG has been back at the assisted living for 3 weeks now and this was the first phone call I've gotten.

I'm at a wedding reception Sat night and a nice couple ask me if my mom (Pink Grandma) is doing better this week. I respond that she's different each day, we never know who we're going to get, and then I ask "Why, what was she doing last week?" This nice couple visits the residents at the assisted living were Pink Grandma lives, and knows that Pink Grandma is my mother... The nice lady says that she walked into her room and saw Pink Grandma kneeling at her bed as if she was praying, but she wasn't praying, she was trying to put on some clothes. So the nice lady calls to the nursing assistant for help and they get Pink Grandma (PG) dressed. Pink Grandma responds, "They help me so much already that I hate to bother them."

So again, my acceptance of the situation is reinforced that if Pink Grandma gets hurt over and over that there's nothing I can do to prevent it, because I can't change/force her behavior. I'm so glad that my brother was here visiting when PG broke her wrist and we kept telling her to use the call button, but she kept falling because she wouldn't use it (trying to be self-reliant). I'm glad that he saw her behavior and reinforced to me that we can't do anything to change her...he's right, but I still felt like I should sleep in her room and get whatever she needs--he points out that I need to live my own life.

So my hubby (whom I'll refer to as Super-son-in-law or SSIL) and I visited PG yesterday and she wants to die because the physical therapy "isn't working". (She's had only three visits from the therapist and she's suppose to have about 18 visits.) She "expects" to be functioning normal by now. So dying is the only option. Well, we visited with her for a while, tried to explain how the therapy works (as in not instantaneously) and tried to just shoot the breeze. A few days earlier, SSIL had brought PG some new nightgowns that I had bought for her, and as we were leaving PG says how much she loves the nightgowns and that SSIL is wonderful and he should do all her shopping:) SSIL can do no wrong--as far as PG is concerned--PG "wouldn't know what to do without him". But I'm grateful that she loves him so much, it takes part of the burden from me in some way.

Now, I'm just going to give a little history of what happened to PG recently...she's had Parkinson's for almost 20 years, has been walking mostly without an aide, but sometimes uses a cane or walker (but mostly not, because she doesn't want people to see her with a cane or a walker). The folks at the assisted living have Wii bowling teams and PG is very good--she has the most turkeys--woohoo. After bowling league on June 17th she fell and broke her wrist badly. She needed surgery to correct it, but refused and actually was refusing a cast also, but I talked her into it. She took nail clippers to the first cast and clipped away the whole part around her hand. The second cast she just flat out pulled off after it was on for only two days (it went a little past her elbow--that would've been fun to watch). From the ER, they sent her to a nursing home that just about sent her over the edge. She was so confused and disoriented. She even thought she had "signed up for the program" and was frantic one morning when we walked in to visit. She wanted to know why no one would take her to get in line. I finally figure out that she thought she was going to be euthanized--and she wanted to be!! She finished out her sentence in a splint--I didn't have the heart to have her arm casted a third time. Ever since she broke her wrist, she hasn't been able to walk (CT of brain is normal). And she acts as if her left arm (the broken one) doesn't exist. The splint was removed three weeks ago!! And she returned to her assisted living facility two weeks ago. When the physical therapist has PG walk with a walker, she does quite well, but otherwise PG thinks that her legs don't work.

Well, I'll end for now. My assignment is to buy PG some "regular" panties--they're easier to pull up and down. The panties she has now are the kind that compress you so that you look skinnier and are more difficult to pull up and down--she's very much about her looks which is partly surprising to me that she doesn't have a stronger attitude about getting better. But I also know that she's probably tired of trying and I understand that too. I'll have to get some really "cute" grandma panties so that SSIL stays on the pedestal.

This is Pink Grandma with her newest great-grandchild in August 2008. You can see the bruise on her forehead (one of many all over her body) from falling down. She "doesn't want to bother" the nurses to help her; therefore, she falls down. At the time of this picture, she was in a nursing home recovering from a broken wrist which caused her to be unable to walk?????!!!!! She's now back at her home in an assisted living facility. I'll expand more about her injury later. I'm watching the Olympic's men's USA basketball team play Spain for the Gold:)

This is where I plan to share (or vent) our family's experiences with Parkinson's Disease. I would say our experiences with Pink Grandma, but she's not herself very much any more...Parkinson's Disease (PD) is stealing her from us.