My father passed away on March 5. I am grateful for the bond we developed over the last 5 years as I cared for him. The end was sad, perhaps harder than it should have been. Â I wish I had done more for him. More on his passing another time.
Now the focus has shifted to Mom. I had hoped that after Dad’s passing there would be a period of relative calm, but in an abrupt shift of circumstances at the end of May Mom suffered a sudden complete heart block while at home and was rushed by ambulance to the hospital ER. She received a pacemaker shortly thereafter and returned home after a week.
Her short term memory has dropped off a cliff since her hospitalization. Her energy is very low and her mood has become irritable and oppositional. She has been experiencing extreme restlessness after bedtime. In short, she seems to have lept past the threshold to Alzheimer’s. She started Resperidal a couple of nights ago and that seems to have helped calm her a bit, though she is more agitated tonight than last night. I hope she’ll get some relief and feel better soon.
In any case, I feel the need to record some of our experiences here, for my own sake.
More later.