Long Time No Hear

I know it's been a while, to say the least, since I've blogged about my mom and life in Dementiaville.  I have successfully made the transition from one Home Health Agency to another.  As far as the agencies go I honestly don't think you need more than an eight grade education to run them.  I have never spoken to more incompetent people in one place than these agencies that are supposed to have your ailing parent, spouse, whatever in their best interest.  The only interest they are concerned with are their own.  The administrators should be made to do the job these aides do and the aides should be forced to go to school with structured classes on how to take care of patients.  It is a thankless job, I know because I do it when they are not around and I have lived it every day for the last two years.  The aide we have now is wonderful, and she is even teaching my dogs Spanish.  She also has my mom playing on an IPad, something the other aides would never have done, one because they don't have one and two because they probably wouldn't know how to use one.  It is some penguin game that makes sounds similar to the original Mario Brothers on the original Nintendo.  My mom has actually beaten the aide several times.

So the midget has become an IPad officiando but can't walk, barely speaks anymore and more often than not carries on the most bizarre conversations.  Just to give you an idea of what life is like at the ole' homestead of crazy, when I come home from work in the late afternoon whatever she is watching on television has become her reality.  If I don't remind the aides or my family to turn the lights on come 3:30 in the afternoon, my mom loses herself to whatever is going on on the big screen.  One day I came home from work and she called me into the living room to tell me it was raining.  Of course it was a perfectly warm Autumn day, but on the big screen it was pouring.  One day she told me to call the police because a man was hurt.  And my personal favorite was when she told me to saddle up the horse.  "Okay," I said, "but can we wait until after dinner."  She agreed.  I told the aide, "No more Lifetime movies." Although when she watched the movie, Secretariat, she asked me to place a bet and than wanted her winnings after the horse won.

I have to admit that watching her slowly go in and out of reality is difficult. Sometimes the only way to communicate is to join her in her world.  Even though the new aide is pleasant and takes care of mom better than some that have come before her I'd be lying if I didn't say that the lack of privacy in my house is wearing on my patience.  My only saving grace is that I now teach four days a week so I am not home as much during the day.  Yet, when I am home I can't get any work done, hence I find myself going to work earlier and staying later.

There are days when my mom can remember what it was like to listen to Mussolini talk in the square in Vittoria, Italy.  She told my family one day that she had to wear a box type hat with a black tassel hanging from one side as she marched with the other children from her school.  While she only lived in Italy a few years she remembers those days like they were yesterday.  But each afternoon she can't remember that she lives with me and my family in my house.

There is no telling how long or how quickly this disease will take before it closes the door back to reality permanently.  It is a silent thief that robs the victim of today and tomorrow and as it progresses it leaves but mere shell fragments of yesterday in its wake.