Observation: Lewy and Holiday Stress

The entire week before Thanksgiving, my mom was out of sorts.  She had a lot of helleborous niger which chased the hallucinations away, even if it was only temporarily at times.  I know she enjoys the relief from the visions of strangers, little kids and extra animals that she often sees because of her Lewy Bodies.

When she has hallucinations, I always make sure to pay extra attention to what she eats, things that could be bothering her; we all know that things change like the wind with our patients, it happens in a split second.  I observe her so that I can understand the illness.   Mostly because I want to document everything so that one day if medical science doesn't catch up, my husband can at least read my notes and know how to care for me.

Learning about Lewy Bodies and living with it is like nothing else I've ever studied.  It's such an emotional roller coaster for the Care Giver.  I often wonder if it's because we put so much effort into our loved one and don't see much improvement.  I am beginning to understand more of why it is so important to change the focus of care giving to myself.  It's the same notion of being in a plane that's about to crash and the face mask drops, you put it on yourself first and then you can help others.

I won't lie, putting the mask on yourself first takes guts.  It's hard, especially for care givers.  The thing is, as care givers we can easily slide down pitty party hill if we move our focus to the people we care for.  That's when the old nasty stuff like resentment, ill will, depression and all the other horrible things that seem to happen to good people, enters our lives.

Our emotions, how we feel, the thoughts we have, all affect our wards.  Every thing.  It's almost like a Universal Consciousness thing going on between my mom and the world.  She has extrasensory perception, well it appears that way.  She reads my thoughts!  She reacts to my thoughts.  The thoughts, they become her reality and next thing I know, we are sliding on Shit Street and things are messy.

Not having a break from my mom in several weeks, I went to that Pitty Party Hill and dove down head first before I turned onto Shit Street ending with a face full of stinky crap.  It was unpleasant.  I cried.  I didn't want to, crying makes me have puffy eyes the following day (it was Thanksgiving Day - oiy!)  My mom, she was extra irritable and was being nasty just for the sake of being a bitch.  I hate it when that happens.

I think she stresses out over seeing people that she hasn't seen in awhile.  I'm noticing that whenever her routine is broken, she gets nervous and begins to hallucinate.  She's more sensitive to foods too, like tomatoes and peppers.  Her taste buds change because everything she eats is lousy tasting to her.  Hypnosis sort of works, it helps her to sleep at night but not completely through the night.

Once we arrived at my sisters house for dinner, my mom seemed to relax.  She saw my Aunt Jay, her best buddy.  My niece came over.  My mom got to be with the kids, she loved it.

We drove my Aunt Jay home, on the ride over to Jay's my mom got nervous because it was so dark outside.  She was stuttering and a bit lethargic looking.  She was talking words that made no sense.  Fortunately, I travel with a bottle of Helleborous so I gave her a few pellets.  She was much better around an hour later when we were home and she was in her bed.

Last night she slept great, not waking until 7am.  She woke up refreshed and happy.  No confusion.  No need for Helleborous Niger.

Holidays absolutely stress my mom out.  Keeping the stress minimal is the secret.  Now if I could only figure out how to keep the stress minimal.... any ideas?