Angie & Jim

The Next Phaseby Jim

We’re getting to a more difficult part in Mom’s care. It seems that more often than not, we can’t understand Mom’s responses. We know she is still conscious and has wants, but she is having a very difficult time expressing them. Eating is also difficult because it exhausts her, and if we take a break, she doesn’t get much to eat. The same goes for drinking: we can tell she is thirsty, but when she drinks too quickly or too much, she coughs a lot. Her coughs are getting weaker and we’re all a little worried.

In spite of these difficulties, we are still able to make her smile during the day. This morning, we had our usual routine of “Smiles for Life” followed by “Dana’s Dead” and “Shooting Booth”. Those got her to smile and laugh. The pictures I’ll attach are while she was watching those this morning (and again this evening). It is so good to hear her laugh and see her smile, and since she can’t remember having watched them earlier in the day, we don’t mind seeing them multiple times a day.

We ordered a hospital bed for her and have it set up in the living room. It is more convenient because we can sit and face her more easily for feeding and communicating. We had to do a little rearranging of the furniture, but we’ve managed to get things configured nicely. Mom finished watching Anne of Avonlea, Born Free, and then Tangled tonight. We can tell she really enjoys watching her favorites. I’m glad we all have such similar taste in entertainment 😉

(Jon’s addition:) Mom is speaking less, but she repeated a few things back today when prompted. We had some potato soup today, which I was describing to her (with cheddar cheese and bacon bits), and mom said “Yum!” Later when I asked her if she’d prefer some more “chocolate milk” (actually Boost) or more potato soup she responded with “more potato soup.” Seems small, but since she’s saying so little it’s still nice to hear her talking. I also asked her today if she knew who I was and she said “Jon”, so I know she still recognizes us and knows what is going on around her, although there are more times now when we ask her questions and she seems unable to respond. (End of Jon’s addition)

We really got her to laugh tonight as we were singing to her. We decided to sing to her in the living room before taking her back to the bedroom. We had been singing a few songs and we got to the hymn, “Secret Prayer”. None of us were super familiar with it, but it has such a fun tune that we sang it with gusto. When we got to the chorus after the 2nd verse, I thought I would try the tenor part (which has a different rhythm from the melody), but I totally lost the notes and we stumbled for a couple lines and it sounded so bad that we all busted up laughing. It got a good chuckle out of Mom, too, which was hilarious. It was really fun to all laugh together. It took us a minute or two to regain our composure and then we all decided who was going to sing what and we finished the song. We sang a few more and then put her to bed. I recorded one of the songs, but it was a little dark, sorry. You may not be able to see it, but Mom was mouthing some of the words with us, especially on the first verse.

Thanks for reading and thank you for your love and support.