Even Blue Potatoes Can Cause the Blues

Saturday was quite an intense day; my mom's mood fluctuated way more than I've ever seen it swing.  We went from laughing and dancing in the supermarket to death threats by afternoon.  I blame it all on the volatile concoction of the upset in her environment from last week, the sun and blue potatoes.

Quite some time ago I had written about plants of the Deadly Nightshade variety, this includes potatoes, eggplant and tomatoes.  I had read how they can bring on hallucinations.  I observed that my mom seemed to hallucinate a lot more whenever I had given her potatoes and eggplant.  We eliminated both from her diet and her hallucinations were not as frightening to her.

My mom enjoys eggplant and potatoes.

I created recipes using eggplant, modifying my mom's heavily breaded method of preparing this unusual vegetable with a grilling technique.  My mom has been thrilled to eat eggplant again, singing my praises for creating a food masterpiece that tickles her taste buds.  Eggplant, as long as I peel the skin, doesn't give her scary hallucinations.

I've attempted to give my mom potatoes a couple of times and each time, she would turn sour.  She would become frightened and I would become a stranger in her eyes.  Suspicion and paranoia fed her insecurity, leaving us wondering exactly what should we do, would we ever get through this?  Real thoughts that flooded my mind on Saturday during my mom's wild trip with her hallucinations.

I've observed that even blue potatoes can cause the blues, bringing on dementia episodes that morph my mom into a character out of a horror movie.

The reason that I think this happens with potatoes is that there's a lot of starch in potatoes.  It raises my mom's blood sugar too high.  Over the course of caring for my mom, I've noticed that when her blood sugar is elevated she'll hallucinate... a lot.

My mom, she can eat yams or sweet potatoes with out any trouble, but any form of potato, red, white or even blue potatoes can cause the blues.

Saturday night ended well.  After my mom came back from her escape attempt earlier in the day, she sat in her chair and took a nap for an hour.  She woke up happy and in a good place, her spirit was renewed.  Walking lowers her blood sugar, it was exactly what she needed to chase the blues away.

We had dinner and while I was cleaning up the kitchen, I put on Pandora radio so that music would fill the house.

The music attracted my mom, she came out of her room and sat in her favorite seat.  I noticed her begin to move, doing the exercises that she had learned at the Adult Day Health Program; the same dance that she did at the Supermarket earlier in the day.

I was able to capture a little video of her doing her dance in her seat.  She reminded me of a school girl who is trying out for the cheer leading squad ... practice, practice, practice.  My mom, her dancing in the seat, doing the dance that she learned at "school", made the perfect ending to an otherwise crazy day with Lewy.