I couldn't sleep...
...so I did some polishing and a little updating on this site. I'm in the process of targeting the individual segment titles on the yearly History 'home' pages directly to the segments, as well as to the pages where a number of segments are published. I also did intra-page targeting on Mom's Medications page, and I'm prepared to begin uploading History for 2001.
    In the meantime I spent a lot of time with my mother being up today. It was such a pleasure. We went out to eat this evening to a new restaurant. Background noise and visual confusion take a quick toll on her, these days. When we arrived the restaurant was close to empty, quiet, the interior looked interesting and the wait staff was solicitous. Mom liked the restaurant, liked the view, the menu selections, and suggested that we put it on our list of places to eat. We had arrived, though, just ahead of the dinner crowd. As the interior filled, conversations bounced off the walls and ceiling and lots of people began moving among the tables. She quickly became distracted and irritated. Suddenly she couldn't remember where we were, what she'd ordered, why she'd ordered it...now, mind you, this isn't unusual. Tonight, though, she seemed particularly acute mentally, especially since she'd just come off oxygen about an hour previous to visiting the restaurant. But, even in a peak environment, she still falls victim to the other curses of old age: unreliable hearing, eye-sight that isn't as quick or as correctable, if you're reading this, you probably know that drill. This time, though, she was aware of the quick erosion from alertness to fogginess and she wasn't pleased about it.
    So, I realized, even when she's doing well, she still exhibits The Ancient's sensitivity to aural and visual confusion (I'm thinking of it as analogous to The Princess and the Pea), and can be thrown off a promising mental course by environmental distraction.
    Dementia is such a tricky business. It's too complicated a matter to call it all "Alzheimer's", load every case of dementia into a nursing home and allow it to deteriorate without observation and experimentation with behavior and environment (including the environment of one's body).
- posted by gail rae @ 00:53   email...this post