Sunday, January 1, 1995

We were up at 10:30 last night. My mother said "You need to fix it (the bed) because I'm not getting back in it" as she went straight to her chair, not letting me put her robe on her (which is ok tonight, but it won't be a few nights from now when the temperature drops into the teens).

It was so funny how my mother woke up from sleeping in her chair about a half hour before midnight. I turned on the TV, thinking it might be ok, and we might as well see the ball drop at Time's Square since we were up. My mother enjoyed that. Afterwards, I asked if she wanted to go back to bed. She said it didn't matter to her. I told her it kind of mattered to me because I needed to sleep since I was going to be cooking a New Year's dinner. So we went back to bed, but just for an hour.

Something happened this morning that changed our New Year's Day plans. Apparently I used up all the water in the well this morning. After being up at 1:00, we went back to bed at 2:30, and then at 4:30, my mother woke up, finding me asleep, and told me that I should be washing clothes, that we girls weren't working together, helping each other. I did have some washing to catch up on, so I did it.

So since I'd used up all the water, we decided to have our New Year's get together at my sisters. Everything went pretty well. Till we got home. My sister and brother-in-law came with us for a few minutes to make sure the well was ok and to look up some genealogical information that my niece wanted. My brother-in-law was in the living-room with my mother, watching a comedy show on TV. As soon as they were gone, my mother went to the bathroom and took off her pants, and I saw why she had been looking disturbed. She had needed to go but wouldn't because my brother-in-law was there. She was upset with me as I helped her get into a gown and again when I was giving pills--she said I'd already fiven them to her (She'd just had a vitamin at supper). She didn't want to watch TV as we usually do a little before bedtime. She looked sleepy, so I asked if she was ready to go to bed, and she said she wasn't, that she didn't think she could, and that I should just lock up the house.

She had an incident of incontinence just before I woke up this morning, too. Or maybe it was just not being able to figure out how to get to the bathroom. She had made it there, passing up the bedside potty, put the lid down, and then, well--I'm glad I took out the carpet that bathroom had and replaced it with tiles.

Monday, January 2, 1995

I got my mother to go to bed at 9:30 last night, and I gave her a second Thoridazine at that time. Then we were up an hour later. I think we might have been at midnight, too, if I hadn't been successful in convincing her it was still time to be asleep. Maybe that second Thoridazine helped. She's to have two at bedtime, but I've been giving her only one, because if I give them to her at the same time, she will be incontinent. Maybe one at supper and another at bedtime might work better. I think two may be too much at times, and at other times one isn't enough.

An incident of incontinence this morning makes me think this must be a time when two is too much. Also she's been really sleepy and confused this morning and didn't eat breakfast. Maybe the second Thoridazine was too much. It helped me get some sleep for her to sleep more, but I don't like the way she is today. She's been so sleepy, it's like she's hardly waking up all day long.

Tuesday, January 3, 1995

It's 1:00 a.m. and we've been up for about half a hour. My mother would have got up an hour earlier, but I told her the house was too cold and that I needed to warm it up, which was true. She had said she had a headache, so I gave her an asprin. When she got up just now, I had the house warm enough now, but she wasn't happy with me for not letting her up earlier, and she also said "You didn't ever bring me that asprin, and my head is killing me!"

After at least an hour of being awake and restless, my mother has now fallen asleep in her chair. She kept saying her feet were cold, so I changed her from socks to the fuzzy warm house shoes she got for Christmas. She complained that the new stool my brother-in-law made for her didn't work because it made her feet cold when she used it. I tried to explain that it was to rest her feet on, not to warm them, and that we'd have to wrap her feet up good to get them warm.

Friday, January 6, 1995

There are times my mother needs more Thoridazine at night, and I just have to figure out when those times are. Lately I've been giving her more, the amount the directions on the bottle say to give. She has been sleeping all night till nearly daylight, and I feel so much better being able to do the same. I'm not sure I like the daytime affect though. The mornings aren't good. She doesn't seem to like me at all in the mornings, perhaps because she's still sleepy. She seems to perk up in the afternoons and is kind and loving then. In the mornings lately she's been talking in her sleep as she's sitting in her chair and getting so confused over her dreams. She's also begun refusing to let the Home Health Aides give her a bath. I think she is also hearing things I don't say--auditory hallucinations. Today when I was just asking her what was wrong, she said "You don't believe me. I'm not going to go there today. This is going to kill me. I'm not going to go." I wasn't trying to get her to go anywhere, just asking what was was wrong and if she was hurting anywhere."

We went for a walk, and she came back and sat in a straight chair near the heater. I saw she was about to fall asleep, so I suggested that she move to her chair. She said that wasn't the chair she sat in. I fixed her a snack, and she ate it, and from then on everything went ok.

Saturday, January 7, 1995

Last night my mother seemed so concerned about me when I got soaked by rain coming back from grocery shopping. We had a strange night, though. She tried to get up to stay ever since midnight. At bedtime she wanted to keep her pants on, saying they would be better than the gown. So I opened a drawer and pulled out the flannel pajamas I'd got her for Christmas, and she agreed to put them on. But then evey time she got up during the night to use the bathroom, she's been trying to take the pajama bottoms completly off.

Everything my mother said when she got up this morning told me she wasn't understanding a word I said. It was as if she were still talking to someone from a dream. As she was using the bathroom, I was trying to tell her to keep her pajama bottoms on, not to pull them completly off, and she said "Well this place is mine! They can't take it away from me! I don't see why they're trying to!"

Apparently whatever it was had been forgotten by breakfast time. She ate half her breakfast, and then went to sit in her chair, where she quickly fell asleep.

© 1995, 1997 Brenda Parris Sibley

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