Wandering and Dressing, or trying to at least....

Let's look at dressing today and some recent developments, hard to see.

Mom likes to wear pantyhose, so that's fine, and I keep trying to assist her in putting them on.

She'll try the right leg, usually get it done correctly, then will try to put her shoes on, without putting the left leg on!

Today, she got the right leg on, then wanted her shoes, and for about three minutes she took the shoes, reversed feet, reversed direction of the shoes, and had no idea that she had one 'black' leg and one 'white' (without pantyhose) leg. So I got down on the floor and put the other leg in the pantyhose, and got the shoes on the right feet.

When Mom started having her little accidents in chairs I got some old towels out and folded them and put them on the chairs that she sits on; today she's taken the towel off the living room chair, has it in her hand, and is wandering in lazy circles in the living room with the 'blank' look on her face. And now when she walks in the house, her left arm is cocked at the elbow. Wondering what this phase means?

Ok on the bathroom stuff.....

...until 4:30AM this morning, Mom was up and I heard the encouraging sound of 'tinkle' in the toilet, so I figured everything was coming out OK, then Mom comes back to bed walking very strangely, so I get up and you got it, poop on the floor, walked in it, get out the carpet cleaner and spot stuff, then have to shower Mom off too.

'Why are we doing this?' Mom asks, when I tell her she's full of poop and it was all over the floor she retorts 'Must have been someone else, it is certainly not me'...more later!

Changes in the last weeks.....

....are sleep related, Mom's been wishing to go to bed even while still light outside. Yesterday, Ash Wednesday, we went to the 5:30 evening Mass, got home about 6:40, and all Mom wanted to do was go to bed. She had an almost somnabulistic look on her face, one that I can call the 'zombie' look, and just went down the hallway so I could undress her and get her ready for bed. by 6:55 she was in bed and snoring, true it was a busy day with Masses and a trip to the Apple Store for updates and stuff. I got Mom up at about 9:30 for a bathroom stop, she slept through until about 6AM.

I've not really been looking forward to the time change this weekend, meaning more light later and less light earlier. We'll see how she handles it.

With regards to other things, Mom continues to exhibit wandering behaviors, the other day she was up and down from the chair to the front door almost constantly for three hours, classic repeating behaviors of dementia not only limited to verbal things.

This morning in the car on the way to Mass, an 8 minute journey, Mom was upset for some reason about black shoes, she must have asked about black shoes ten times in the car, then when we got into Church she asked if they had black shoes here...and when Father Jim showed up she commented about 'he has nice black shoes'.

Chewing and swallowing are now problems; Mom will eat bites of food like she's shovelling coal into a steam engine, chew and chew, and not swallow unless prompted to. All those 'manners' things that parents teach children are now unravelling for Mom, my new mantra at eating times is 'eat, chew, swallow'.