Hes been depressed since Monday after the VA appointment. They even have him on a depression watch and have called in a psychologist to speak with him.
Possibly doing the thinking / memory evaluation got him down on himself? Possibly eating the pizza which was a mess and difficult got him frustrated? I don't really know what the trigger was and Ive been trying to get it out of him for two days. I just keep encouraging him and telling him to keep his sunny side on.
Today I said that and told him not to be sad. He looked at me and said I'm not sad. I'm just done. Next phase is just me, you, Buck and dim sum.... /sigh
Last night he called me and was insisting I help get him on a catheter. He is having difficulty holding his bladder and/or getting a significant early enough signal that he needs to go. Probably emotionally crushing when this happens, and I don't think he is getting much compassion from the staff.
I decided to go early this morning and bring him an Egg McMuffin which always cheers him up. When I get there he is in the hall outside his door reporting the catheter broke. He didn't really have a full catheter, but rather a sort of condom thing. Pretty far on the awful side of things that had ripped off him and taken a chunk of pelvic hair with it. I was pretty mortified by the whole thing. I also dont like the idea of him having the ability of just laying in bed and not making the effort to get to the commode.
We talked about what was the difficulty again and he says sometimes he knows he needs to go but cant get there in time and makes a mess, which compounds the problem. That sometimes at night he just goes and doesn't realize hes going then has to sit in it.
Considering the awful sight of what the current option was, I asked if he would consider some pull ups that would still allow him to use the commode if he could make it, but would also catch a spill should he not, and he agreed to try.
Michelle, his speech therapist came around wanting to talk about what happened at the VA that got him so down. We talked for a long time. She says, like me, she can walk in and know almost immediately how he is doing by looking at his face. Part of Parkinson's is kind of a blank stare / loss of facial expression. She reported last Thursday ish he was doing so well with his swallowing she was about ready to move him to a different diet, then he back slid again. We had a discussion about trying to figure out what the difference was between those great days and the not good days. She was ready to do his therapy and I left them alone to go find Syndney the Ocuupational therapist to talk about dexterity exercises.
If you watch last Monday's VA appointment you can see that is right is actually significantly slower than his left. I don't know if this is because he is concentrating so hard on repairing his left or what, but wanted to ask her to do those same exercises with him. She said she was already. She also wanted to talk about the depression. We talked about the catheter and using a diaper instead and she said oh please get him pullups instead. That is like the kiss of death for an older person to be in diapers. They don't have the pullups there - only ones more like diapers, so they put one of those on him and I ran down the block to Walgreens to buy him a pack to try.
He just called to say it was working out well....YEA!
While there, he asked me to check his phone for him. When I pick it up he says to call myself...just to test it out. I go to his phonebook and EVERYTHING is deleted with one blank entry labeled BJGD. I loaded that phone when it came in with every single contact he had in his phone system here plus a few more. I have no idea how that happened but its essentially empty with only me and Arlene in it now, as I dont have all the rest of his contacts in my cell phone :/
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