After a long pause ...
... apologies for the long pauses: after a very tough couple of years, Ive been trying to take time to get my own life into some kind of order again. Not sure I'm winning, but one day at a time ... (Starting to record some of my own music, and managing to fit in the odd short break. In my daydreams, therefore,I will retire to Lisbon and learn to play Portuguese guitar!)
Mum is declining quite rapidly now, and is visibily more frail every time we visit. One of the medications that were being used to try to minimse the TIAs started to cause episodes of internal bleeding, so it's had to be discontinued and several alternatives were tried without any great success (or with other side effects).
So ... Mum has had a number more TIAs of varying degrees. She's much slower on her feet (and rather unsteady now too) and gets lost walking round the home: any sense of space - and time - is now pretty much past.
She's also losing weight again, so - with home's consent and guidance - taking in what calories we can that she'll find tempting, so we can try to keep her weight up.
She's also now finding putting sentences together much more difficult: conversation is obviously a struggle for her now, and she gets tired very quickly - our visits are shorter now, as chatting to us wears her out fairly rapidly.
Although the carers tell us she has grumpy days where she's frustrated that she can't express herself so readily any more, her mood during our visits remains reasonably cheerful most of the time. By and large, the long, slow fade out seems to being relatively peaceful - for her, at least. And she's still glad to see us - and us her
Struck by the irony - for me - othe 'announcement' re Lady Thatcher: a woman my Mum spent her conscious years loathing with a passion. Thoh taking in the news is beyond my Mum's powers, it would nice to think she might take it on board and hope that the announcement might make more of the wider public recognise this terrible illness and campaign hard for sufferers and their carers. But then I always was a sucker for a happy ending ...
... apologies for the long pauses: after a very tough couple of years, Ive been trying to take time to get my own life into some kind of order again. Not sure I'm winning, but one day at a time ... (Starting to record some of my own music, and managing to fit in the odd short break. In my daydreams, therefore,I will retire to Lisbon and learn to play Portuguese guitar!)
Mum is declining quite rapidly now, and is visibily more frail every time we visit. One of the medications that were being used to try to minimse the TIAs started to cause episodes of internal bleeding, so it's had to be discontinued and several alternatives were tried without any great success (or with other side effects).
So ... Mum has had a number more TIAs of varying degrees. She's much slower on her feet (and rather unsteady now too) and gets lost walking round the home: any sense of space - and time - is now pretty much past.
She's also losing weight again, so - with home's consent and guidance - taking in what calories we can that she'll find tempting, so we can try to keep her weight up.
She's also now finding putting sentences together much more difficult: conversation is obviously a struggle for her now, and she gets tired very quickly - our visits are shorter now, as chatting to us wears her out fairly rapidly.
Although the carers tell us she has grumpy days where she's frustrated that she can't express herself so readily any more, her mood during our visits remains reasonably cheerful most of the time. By and large, the long, slow fade out seems to being relatively peaceful - for her, at least. And she's still glad to see us - and us her
Struck by the irony - for me - othe 'announcement' re Lady Thatcher: a woman my Mum spent her conscious years loathing with a passion. Thoh taking in the news is beyond my Mum's powers, it would nice to think she might take it on board and hope that the announcement might make more of the wider public recognise this terrible illness and campaign hard for sufferers and their carers. But then I always was a sucker for a happy ending ...
