A Happy Thanksgiving to all! As those in the U.S. know, this is a big American family holiday, with people traveling all over the country to have the big turkey and stuffing and pumpkin pie dinner with their "folks."
I had some trepidations about it this year; we never know until we get there how Mom will be doing on a given day. We couldn't be sure she would be up to being taken from her dementia home over to the nursing home where my dad lives for the Thanksgiving meal, but made reservations for the meal at the nursing home in the hopes she would.
As it turned out, things went quite smoothly. Whereas last time we visited (a couple of weeks ago) we found Mom tearful and upset when we got to the dementia home, today she was bright and cheerful and glad to see us. It took a few minutes and a couple of tries to maneuver her from a wheelchair into the car, but she had no major objections to this operation.
She was glad to see Dad, tried to participate in the conversation, and managed a few remarks that made sense, although at this point most of her "conversation" is pretty unintelligible. Impressively, quite a lot of the turkey dinner went down well. (She has had off-and-on problems with eating enough, and yesterday when I asked the nurses, they said she needs a *lot* of prompting to eat.) I cut up the turkey for her, handed her the fork, and she did quite well. There were a couple of little goofs. She poured some of her milk over the turkey; we caught her before it was all over the table. Then after carefully pouring more milk into her glass from a small paper carton, she proceeded to try to eat the milk with her fork. Then a few minutes later she remembered how to drink from a glass....
Anyway, best wishes to all in getting through the sometimes perilous holiday celebrations.
Karen
I had some trepidations about it this year; we never know until we get there how Mom will be doing on a given day. We couldn't be sure she would be up to being taken from her dementia home over to the nursing home where my dad lives for the Thanksgiving meal, but made reservations for the meal at the nursing home in the hopes she would.
As it turned out, things went quite smoothly. Whereas last time we visited (a couple of weeks ago) we found Mom tearful and upset when we got to the dementia home, today she was bright and cheerful and glad to see us. It took a few minutes and a couple of tries to maneuver her from a wheelchair into the car, but she had no major objections to this operation.
She was glad to see Dad, tried to participate in the conversation, and managed a few remarks that made sense, although at this point most of her "conversation" is pretty unintelligible. Impressively, quite a lot of the turkey dinner went down well. (She has had off-and-on problems with eating enough, and yesterday when I asked the nurses, they said she needs a *lot* of prompting to eat.) I cut up the turkey for her, handed her the fork, and she did quite well. There were a couple of little goofs. She poured some of her milk over the turkey; we caught her before it was all over the table. Then after carefully pouring more milk into her glass from a small paper carton, she proceeded to try to eat the milk with her fork. Then a few minutes later she remembered how to drink from a glass....
Anyway, best wishes to all in getting through the sometimes perilous holiday celebrations.
Karen
