I Need to Get to Church!

My mom's brain seems to have been twanged since Thursday when she didn't have a very good day at "school." She became extremely agitated in the afternoon, the way she gets when she eats any food made with wheat gluten or white foods like potatoes.  I don't know if it was the Joseph's pita bread that I used to make her a sandwich or if she sneakily nabbed a sliver of cake.  In any event, my mother was wild when I picked her up.

Mom didn't recognize me.  I tried to put my hand on her back to help guide her out the door but she planted her feet and yelled at me to get my hands off her.  She was mad with everyone, even the aids and nurses.

It sort of started on Wednesday when one of the assistants took my mom to the bathroom.  My mom doesn't need assistance and got angry that someone took her after we told them she was fine by herself.  She believed that the woman would stick her in the ass with a needle so that we could cart her off to a nursing home, her biggest fear, a fear that seems to have surfaced since she visited her brother Al in a home last week.

I knew that once I got her home and gave her a drink of Hyoscyamus Niger her agitation would go away and she'd be more pleasant to be around.  My challenge is getting her to trust the nurses at the program to give her the drink when she is agitated.  Currently, she is paranoid and suspicious of the workers and the nurses and won't eat lunch that I pack for her if the workers put it on a plate for her.  It's really crazy.

The Hyoscyamus worked fast, within 15 minutes my mom was dancing to Frank Sinatra tunes that I put on Pandora Radio as soon as I got in the door.   I wish she'd allow the nurses to give her "the drink."

No more sandwiches for my mother.  I don't want her to start looking for the exits at school to escape.  Once she does "exit seeking" she won't be able to attend the ADH Program, she'll need to go to another where the building is locked down.   The first program she attended was locked down and it seemed to cause more disturbances, she hated it with a passion and lashed out at me more frequently.  I do want to avoid this behavior because it sucks to be on the receiving end of the abuse.

Yesterday was pretty good when we got home from visiting Patricia.  She hallucinated a lot in the afternoon and got angry with me when I couldn't tell her names of the hallucinations or where they had gone.  She appears to hallucinate more when she's left alone, probably because she doesn't know how to entertain herself anymore.  People, like the folks at the program she attends, help to keep her focused on activities so that she isn't seeing her dead friends and relatives.

I played music all afternoon and began dancing spontaneously every so often; it always makes her laugh when I begin dancing slowly from the kitchen and move into the room where she is sitting.  My mom laughed, and before long, she was up dancing and singing along to the music from her days of youthful fun.

My mom was exhausted last night.  Walking up those stairs tired her out.  She fell asleep at 7pm... way too early.

2am... squeak, squeak, squeak.  My mom was up and walking across the squeaky floor boards above my bed to wake me up.

"Ma, it's 2am, it's too early to be awake."  I softly said to her.  I got her to go back to bed.

5:30 am... Sammy the cat was coming to tell me that my mom was awake.  He draped his body across me with a big plop.  He was trying to wake me.  I was woken but I didn't move, I didn't pat him to let him know that he woke me up.  He sighed a few heavy sighs with a purr that got louder and louder.

5:50 am... squeak, squeak, squeak.  My mom was up again, this time I could tell she was dressed because I could hear her shoes clomping and making the squeaks louder.

At the top of the stairs, I saw my mom fully dressed.  She was angry and yelled loudly, shattering the morning silence... "I need to get to church!  We go to church every morning here in this place.  I need a ride!"  My mom was panicking.

I whispered... "Ma, it's not even 6am yet, everyone is sleeping, you'll wake the house...  I think you had a bad dream, we never go to church.  It's OK."

With her outside voice my mom yelled, "I don't give a shit!  I need a ride to church!!"

I calmly got her blue shot glass, filled it with water and added the homeopathic remedy Hyoscyamus, it always calms her agitation.  My mom saw me preparing the remedy and she yelled, "I am not taking that shit!"

I ignored her outburst and handed her the blue shot glass with the remedy.  She drank it with no argument.

She went to her room and sat in her chair.  I put on the taped Ellen Show that I record every day for her, she loves Ellen, she makes her laugh.  I brought her a cup of decaf coffee, her pills and a banana.  She is calm and reasonable.  Our home is back to a normal state and my mom realizes that she was dreaming.  Maybe I need to take her to church tomorrow?