ma's facility

when my mother got to the facility she was considered highly “functional”.  she was MUCH more functional than many.  she was upset to be there.  but when she was not “lucid” she chatted happily and even played the piano.  now, after her accident (she fell and broke a hip and then had 2 strokes), she is more on the level of the lesser functional residents.  i remember in those first days watching someone being fed, and feeling that that was far away for her.  here we are 4 months later, and she is at that level.  she still recognizes us.  i figured that since her kids were so important to her, that there were lots and lots of neural connections created for that, so there are still back up ones, keeping those memories.

so what’s it really like, in a facility for the memory impaired?  i’m impressed with the staff who are so wonderful.  so kind and patient.  they constantly chat with residents.  they seem to be able to see them as the people they used to be, and to understand that they are all in the midst of an illness now.   they know their characters.  each patient is an individual.

my mother is fairly catatonic.  i say hello and sometimes she stares into space.  the most she can say clearly is “yes”, “no”, “i don’t know”.  so this caregiver comes out of her room at one point, chuckling saying “she is SO funny”.  “really?”, i say.  i mean, yes, she is.  she’s funny and kind and wise, but how could she tell? 

i sat with my mother at lunch, feeding her.  the stroke affected her right arm and her tongue. her right arm is locked, bent in.  she had problems swallowing so she is on pureed food.  she has regained a little ability with her tongue and so is eating much better, but still puree. 

 i watched the other residents.  there is one woman who is very functional, and very beautiful.  always dressed nicely, with a sweater and pearls. in september, when i first met her, i wanted my mom to be friends with her.   there is another woman, named r. who stares into space.  she is in a wheelchair and has a doll on her lap.  she has very blue eyes, slightly almond shaped.  she just stares and stares.  in september, i was watching her sitting there like this, and then she had a visitor, an older gentleman who may have been her husband.   she suddenly snapped out of it and jumped up to lead him by the arm to her room.  but today, she was staring into space, in the direction of another woman, called mary.  mary has long white hair, slightly wavy, and ragged.  she has a sharp intense, wrinkled face.  she was possibly beautiful in her youth, but looks more like an evil storybook character now.  she is very active and a bit aggressive.  my sister calls her “scary mary”.  she started yelling at r.  “hey, why don’t you just look out the window.  look over there!”.  but r. wasn’t really staring at her and wasn’t responding to her either.  then mary started cursing at her.  i sort of enjoyed watching and listening to it.  crazy curse words flying.  cursing and cursing and cursing.  the attendants tried to calm her down and stop her cursing.

later, at dinner, r. was more active.  a caregiver was sitting with her trying to get her to eat.  she was pushing her food around, talking about it, talking to it, talking as if in a dream.  talking nonsense.  “you see, if it’s here and then i want to do this.  then they would like it...”  i can’t remember exactly what she said.  it as if  the outer layer of rational thought, of logic, of things making sense has been stripped away revealing a chaos underneath.  a pile of information badly connected.  how are they different from people who are insane?  i guess there are all kinds of mental illnesses, each one with different symptoms.  it is a sort of insanity...

my mother has been watching movies with my sister, so we watched some together too.  she is engaged, and then asleep and then awake and engaged again.  hard to say, but she seems to like it.

i feel badly for my mother.  mostly, i don’t want her to suffer.  she is lucky that she can be in such a nice facility where there are caring people who want to work in a job taking care of her and people like her.  perhaps it is a blessing that she doesn’t really understand where she is.  they say that people with diminished mental capacity aren’t necessarily suffering.  they’re not necessarily aware of their state.  they’re just hanging out.

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