Singing For Dad

Dad's letter was received with a huge smile.  My mom waited all day for dad's reply to the note that she had written and we emailed to Heaven.

Mom sat in bed and read the letter, over and over again.  When I tucked her in she said to me, "He's still crazy about me!  He told me.  He talked about when we went dancing.... he likes me a lot!"  my mom exclaimed with the excitement of a school girl.

"Good night Ma, I'll see you in the morning."  I replied back like I do every night.

My mom woke this morning with a skip in her step.  She danced into the room as she sang, "Goooood Moooorrrrrrrrnnnnnniiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnngggggggggg!"

With her radio in her hand, she untangled the cord and attempted to put her headphones buds in her ears.  I helped her and immediate she began singing.  My mom sang with feeling this morning, putting her heart into it.

In the note that dad had sent her from Heaven, he told her that he loves to hear her sing.  He can hear her singing wherever he is and it makes him know that she's OK.  He told her that her voice is improving, that she can carry a tune.

Mom woke up singing and she hasn't stopped.  She's singing for dad.

I Have Learned

Mom's feeling better today.  The infection is going away.  I am beginning to think that she had this infection for a long time.  She complained about a backache in her lower back.  I didn't read it as a warning that something was up with her kidneys.  Mom has complained about back pain for as long as I can remember.

A heating pad brought relief.  

My mom's hallucinations became an everyday occurrence, I accepted them as the new normal.  I have read a lot about Lewy Bodies Dementia, my mom has many of the symptoms.  Of course we'll never know for sure if it is LBD until she passes and we have an autopsy of her brain.

I have learned.

What I have learned is to pay attention to odd behavior, quick changes  I now know that a UTI can cause hallucinations, especially in my mom.  Put a kidney infection on top of it and she's surely a proverbial basket case, freaked out about what she's "seeing."

Hindsight is always 20/20

Looking in the rear view mirror of the past few months, I realize that my mom's infection was making both of us insane.  It sucked.  I cried a lot.  Now I know that when she has delirium, I need to have her blood and urine tested for a problem.  Antibiotics are helping, my mom even thanked me last night for all that I do for her. WOW!

I have learned that all medicine, natural or pharmaceutical needs to be treated with respect.  Just because something is natural doesn't mean it's good for you.  Same is true for the synthetic pharma drugs.  Both have a place and both need a professional to assist with the administering of the medicine.

I'm grateful that we have a Naturopath Doctor and Medical Doctors who work together through me to help my mom have more good days.  

My mom's kidney infection caused her to have elevated blood pressure.  REALLY HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE.   It freaked me out, as it should.

My mom's hallucinations were intense for both of us.  I noticed that when her blood pressure was high she hallucinated.  If her blood sugar was high too, she'd be a colossal bitch.

Lisinopril for high blood pressure was increased so that it would lower her blood pressure.  Her blood pressure went up.  Her kidneys seemed to be having a bad reaction to the Lisinopril... was she rebounding on the pill?  Rebounding is when a med that you are taking begins to do the opposite of what it was initially intended to treat.

High blood pressure brought on the macular hemorrhage in her "magic eye." She will lose her vision in her eye that she believes allows her to see the dead, specifically my brother and my dad.  She's OK with losing her vision in the one eye, she has another eye that works much better for seeing reality.  She is also happy that even though she may not see my dad anymore, she can still email him.  The email notes make her very happy. I have learned.

The Sanity Line is Fuzzy... But She's Happy

My mom is in Maine and we have a couple of days off from Care Giving.  Personally, I enjoy the time away from my mom but I can't help thinking about her.  I wonder how she is and if she's having happy hallucinations about my dad. 

She was excited about going to Maine with my sister, last time she had gone a few weeks ago, she believed that my brother-in-law sleeping on the sofa was my dad.  She wanted my sister to call our Naturopath Doctor so that he could help him, after all, he'd been dead for over 30 years.

Logic is out the window when it comes to someone with Lewy Bodies Dementia.  Their hallucinations are so real that it's difficult for them to distinguish between dreams and reality.  No matter, the more illogical the explanation the more believable it is in the mind of the demented.  All we can do is help her to feel happy so that the hallucinations are pleasant.

Dream Master used to help.  Now my mom gets mad when I call to "bother him."  She tells me that she likes the visitors.  She doesn't like the name Dream Master so we changed it to Sunshine Maker.

In my mom's mind, my dad is "Heaven's Bus Driver."  He drives limos full of newly deceased souls up to heaven.  My mom, she wants to go on the bus with them because she wants to ask my dad to marry her again; she wants to be with him. 

Yesterday, when we were doing a bit of shopping to set her up with food for her little trip up to Maine, my mom told me all about a big party that she had attended.  She talked about this party as though I knew about it. 

"Susie, your dad, he was at the party.  I saw him and he saw me.  He is so good looking, just like when I first met him.  I was chasing him all around the party!"  My mom said to me with a little light in her eyes and a giggle in her voice.  My mom, she misses my dad and wants to be with him, even if she appears to be chasing him.  She is trying to be cool, making him chase her but he won't, he just watches her chase him.

"Do you want to come with me?"  She asked with a big smile on her face. 

"Where are you going?"  I had asked.

Matter of factly she said, "Oh, do you want to come to the party with me?  We can get on the bus.  Your dad will take us in a limo, I saw him driving a limo.  Do you want to come?"  My mom asked.

"No, I'm sorry Ma, I don't want to die.  Once you go you can't come back.  Once we die it's over, our bodies are gone so we can't enjoy the things that we enjoy on Earth.  I'm not ready to die, I just got married for God's sake... I haven't even had a honeymoon yet!  If you want to go you can go but you won't be able to come back."  I tried to explain.

I don't think she can distinguish the line between the living and the dead.  She sees my deceased brother and my father, she talks to them and now they are answering her.  Fortunately, her hallucinations are telling her that they can't eat Earth food. 

My mom is happy.  She talks to me about her visitors, they entertain her and motivate her to exercise; mom walks from window to window, looking and then out in the yard, walking around and looking over the fence to see the new souls waiting for the bus to heaven. 

My mom singing to her MP3 music... here she is humming along to "A Beautiful Mess" by Jason Mraz.

Music is important to my mom's happiness.  She listens to her MP3 player all the time, even when we go shopping.  She loves Jason Mraz and his song, "A Beautiful Mess."  Yesterday, walking around the supermarket, she was singing out loud and out of tune... it put a smile on my face and a laugh in my heart. 

My mom, she believes the guy on Family Feud talks to her and wants her to win.  She tries to win every day, hoping to win a car, she sits in front of the TV and tries to play.  I don't know what I'll tell her if she believes that she's won a car. 

The sanity line is fuzzy, but she's happy.

High Blood Pressure and Hallucinations

"I could kill you!" My mom exclaimed.

"Huh?  What did I do?  I was downstairs in the bathroom... I was putting on my night gown.  What did I do?" I asked puzzled.

'Oh, if you don't know, then... "  my mom said to me with an angry look.  A look that made me realize that a hallucination of me caused her to be angry.

WTF!?

I am not even in the room and I am now getting myself into trouble.  Is this a bad joke that the Universe is playing on me?

There's got to be a cause for the sudden change ...

Why?  A question that I asked myself over and over again.  I reviewed in my mind everything that was different; things that were out of the everyday routine.  I have observed that when my mom's routine is changed, it creates a disturbance of some kind.  I've also noticed that when my mom's blood pressure is high and uncontrolled, she hallucinates a lot more.

Last week, my mom went with my sister.  Her blood pressure had become elevated over the course of the month since she began taking more Lisinopril; my mom hallucinated a lot more. 
My husband and I expected a disturbance of some kind when my mom came back home, we just had no idea what to expect.

My mom she came home elated that she had seen my dad and he had spoken with her.  She believed that my brother-in-law sleeping on the sofa in Maine was my dad.  She wanted my sister to call our Naturopath Doctor to look dad over because he had been dead for 30 years.  In my mom's mind, my dad had resurrected from the dead.

Back home, getting out of the truck she saw my husband who welcomed her home and asked her about her time in Maine.  "It was a glorious time, it was amazing." She said to him with such enthusiasm, she was drunk with the joys of her visions of my dad.

Things backfired.

I made the mistake of telling my mom that my dad would be back in a couple of days.  For the first couple of days when she had returned, she was still super happy.  She walked from window to window, looking and watching for my dad.  She walked around the back yard when she wasn't walking in the house.  Over and over she would tell me about the people dressed in black and how they were waiting for the bus that would take them to heaven. 

Wednesday afternoon, everything fell apart.  My mom got mad because she couldn't see my dad.  She was pouting and saying things like, "I'll never see him again."  She was on the verge of crying. 

I screwed up.  I gave her a time frame as to when she'd see my deceased dad.  When dad didn't show up, she turned on me.  She began to hallucinate about me.  She got mad because her hallucination of me didn't speak to her.  My mom, she was so mad she wanted to punch me when she saw me for real. 

I did fix the timing thing, I told my mom that time is different here on Earth than in Heaven.  My dad's 2 days could be 2 weeks, 2 months, 2 years.

Blood Pressure Control Issue

Her blood pressure has been much higher and hard to control since she stopped using Cardio HTN, a natural supplement that we get from our Naturopath Doctor.  A supplement that works great to control her blood pressure in a normal range consistently.

The supplement has magnesium in it which caused my mom a serious issue around the time we all got a stomach bug.  She stopped taking the Cardio HTN and her kidney doctor had us up her dose of lisinipril from 10mg per day to 20 mg per day. 

My mom's blood pressure kept going up.  It was back in the 200/90 range which seemed to cause her to have more cognitive problems.  She seems to hallucinate more when her blood pressure is elevated.

I contacted our Naturopath and asked him about Lisinopril, if it could be causing my mom to hallucinate more.   It can. 

Later I researched Lisinopril and discovered that a lot of folks who were once able to take the drug will suddenly form an allergy.  My mom's nose runs none stop, she has a dry cough and she has been complaining about joint pain... all side effects of Lisinopril.

Our ND has my mom taking the Cardio HTN and her blood pressure is back to normal today.  She's even dancing around with her headphones on, singing and dancing to the music on her mini mp3 player. 

It sure is good to have Ma back.  Every day my mom shows me that the body is amazing, that it can heal itself with the right care.  Food is important, real food that is nutritious.  I'm grateful to have a dancing mom today.  High Blood pressure and hallucinations appear to go hand in hand with my mom's condition. 

Rough Daze

The last few days have been a bit of a challenge.  My mom, she was back to her crazy self, hallucinating about people with no heads and people in the trees, people that she claims are angels. 

My dead brother Ed, the electrician, he has been here a lot.  According to my mom, he's doing some wiring so that he can sit in the chair and read by angel light.  My mom gets excited when she sees him and when she tells me about seeing Ed, my God, she gets genuinely excited. 

"I smiled at him like this (she showed me a big smile) and I waved to him, I waved and he waved back!... Susie, Eddie is always here." She exclaimed 2 days ago.

The 15 year old boy who whistles was back too.  She couldn't remember his name, she talked to me as though I knew this boy... "What's his name?"  She said to me, "Come on, you know it... what's his name?"

We had visits from the children, the mischievous children that used to run rampant around my house... that is in my mom's mind these kids were here, stealing her things.  I was back to looking for things that she hid on herself. 

Through all of this, my hands still ache from poor ergonomics when using my computer.  I had to hold back from writing... sorry to anyone who reads my blog regularly. 

We did have some rough times, but I got through them with my mom. 

The other day when she was out with my sister, she bought some gluten free cookies.  I didn't know that my mom was eating them until I spied the open box and lots of cookies missing.  No wonder my mom was behaving crazy, the cookies she ate seemed to bring on the weird behavior, behavior that she'd display anytime she would eat baked goods with Baking Powder or Baking Soda.

I sat with my mom most of the day yesterday.  She frowned at me more than once, looking at me strangely like I was someone else.  My mom was aggitated.  She was upset that we couldn't go out because of the rain and the floods.

My mom, we got her back on track.  I had her take a Vinpocetine 5mg capsule and she took a nap for an hour.  When she woke up, I gave her a cup of coffee and a couple of pieces of dark chocolate.  Her eyes were back to normal, they were not wide and wild, scanning for visions as she had been since Sunday.

A little while later, I gave her one 250mg of Carnitine and 100mg of R-lipoic acid... my mom was back.  She was laughing and talking, smiling at me and hugging me.  Oh... I love it when my mom is here.

For dinner we had a recipe out of Dr. Tirman's cookbook, one that used corriander and curcumin, ginger, pepper and a little white wine.  My mom, she ate the entire meal, her appetite was good, an indicator that she's more present in the now.  An observation, when my mom gives me trouble about food, she's usually in a demented state of mind.

Mom, she's still sleeping... today will be a GREAT day, even if all the streets are flooded.