Mom sure enjoyed the flowers that Rick sent for her 87th!! Eloise is doing about average for her...which is not very pleasant. But it is her life right now. She keeps from going looney by watching movies most of the day. Her favorites are Kindergarten Cop, Overboard, Man from Snowy River, Return of Man from Snowy River (better than the first), It Takes Two (Olsen twins), and a few others that escape me right now.We have been encouraging her to stop eating through out the day...and to cut back on the pumpkin pie. She is finding that large amounts of pumpkin pie tend to make one look like a pumpkin. Her scales would testify of that fact as she is hovering between 165 and 170 lbs. I have noticed lately, however, that the pumpkin pies are not disappearing nearly as quickly as they had been. Soy milk and ice cream are still in high demand. Of course each of those has lots of calories and tend to create a lot of...um...uh...material, shall we say, for the diaper. I told her if she would scale back on the calories she wouldn't have to beat a path to the commode nearly as often. It is still a work in progress.
Dad is doing so much better than I expected he would do upon returning from Avalon, the skilled nursing facility! He is still weak and has a hard time transferring, but his mind is as keen as ever! The manager of Legacy mentioned to me today that he had a nice discussion with Gordon. It seemed to him that Dad was as bright and quick as he was a few months ago before he started the slow decline I mentioned in previous posts. He is pretty much confined to a wheel chair, even in his room, because of his weakness. When he returned from Avalon to Legacy, he was complaining of fairly constant pain pretty much through his whole body, but especially in his legs and hips. Though he still has some pain, he told me yesterday that it is now activity induced rather than constant. Transfers can still be a little painful.We have put him on hospice care to get him some more services. After 45 days (I think) of having hospice care he is evaluated again by the hospice doctor to see if he still qualifies for services. The jury is still out at this point, but I wouldn't be surprised to see him work his way off of their list of qualifiers. If he declines chronically or has an acute episode then we have to decide if we should remove him from hospice so he can get attention at the hospital or leave him on hospice and keep him comfortable. We hope and pray if that happens that the proper course will be clear before us.
