Life goes on...

Things keep busily rolling in our neck of the woods. It's been a week since we moved Mom-in-law into the house. She's doing better at navigating how the house is laid-out, although she still occasionally forgets there's a step down into the sunken living room. She's also doing better at little, but important, things like remembering to turn the stove off. (To clarify that- she doesn't cook, but we put a carafe of her decaf coffee on the stove each morning to keep it warm while we have our regular coffee on the coffeemaker.) Unfortunately though since she can't see well she still has to ask how to turn the stove off, and I verbally direct her where to place her hand to find it. Each day she does a little better at finding it. Yes, I could get up and do it for her, (and Hubby and I both do a lot of things for her) but I figure it's good for her to be able to do some things on her own. She raised a family of 8 kids and was used to doing everything herself, and I think she's struggling with the concept of letting other people do things FOR her. I think she's feeling pretty helpless.

In the meantime, Hubby is trying to figure out exactly what areas she's having trouble with, and whether she has Alzheimer's or dementia (they are separate disorders), and which type , as dementia is further broken down into different types. Until we can get a CAT Scan performed we won't know for sure what it is exactly. Hubby's also giving her little projects to try to increase her cognitive thinking again, since the mind can improve with exercise. He's starting her off with 1st grade math and is planning to slowly work her back up. I printed some simple addition and subtraction problems like 2 + 4 = __. Her biggest problem was seeing the problems on the paper with her bad eyesight. Then, I printed some multiplication and division problems, again simple ones like 6 / 2 = ___ and they took her a little longer to work out but she did it. So he's trying to slowly increase the exercises. The important thing is to get her mind running again. The interesting thing is, when Hubby asks her to answer an abstract thinking question, she doesn't seem to have any difficulties with that, which is unusual with memory disorders. Although, on the abstract side she does have problems with the concept of TIME. For example, she keeps asking when we're taking her back up to Oklahoma to go to the doctor and Hubby keeps explaining to her that it'll be "next month" but then she'll ask the question again later in the day. Each day she asks about it a couple times.

Other than that, she has good days and bad days. On "good" days she seems a little more clear in her thinking, and on "bad" she has more trouble remembering things, even past details. But what I find interesting is how AWARE she is of the problems she's having. She doesn't realize the mistakes she's making while she does it, but then she does realize afterward and I think it embarrasses her. For example, the other day she kept calling her dog, for like 3 minutes she called him because she thought he was in the other room, and then she realized he was sitting on her lap the whole time. She's fully aware of the mistakes she makes, but only after she makes them.

Something that I feel bad for her about is how bored she is right now. Until we can get her to an ophthalmologist she can't see very well, so there's not much she can do but sit around and talk to us and watch TV. She wants things to do, but I'm at a loss for what she CAN do while she can't see close-up. She wants to help in the kitchen but then gets frustrated that she can't see what she's doing. She brushes her pets, and takes them outside, things like that. Any ideas from any of you about what else she can do?