We're Trying Aricept

The VA doctors finally agreed to prescribe this, and I gave Betty the first pill last night. It's supposed to be taken at bedtime because of potential side effects. While the TV ads say "well tolerated by most people," when you read the medical disclaimers in the box, it apparently causes everything short of SUDDEN DEATH... and maybe I just didn't read far down enough to find the part about SUDDEN DEATH.

Betty is worried this morning becauses she's having very vivid dreams, and she's afraid it's a sign that she's losing her mind. She doesn't remember getting the diagnosis of Alzheimers (despite having been told it 50 times), but she remembers seeing the diagnosis on a paper in a doctor's office (actually it was sitting on our kitchen table). She's sad and worried about it, and can't stop talking about how real the dream was. I'm reassuring her that the fact that she DID figure out it was a dream is a sign that she's not completely crazy yet.

I on the other hand...

Life at the VA Hospital

Well, it FELT like a life sentence, anyway. I took MIL for her 6-month checkup, and just as we were ready to leave, she got sick and ended up with full-body tremors that came every 3-4 seconds. Damn spooky, and we ended up spending the rest of the day in the Veterans Administration Hospital emergency room.

I'd brought my iphone for entertainment, but the battery died, and I couldn't leave Betty sitting there while I went to my car to recharge it so I could keep playing Scrabble. Well, I could have, but it would have looked bad...

So we ate lunch out of the vending machines (her blood sugar was low, a possible contributing factor), and I made horrible faces when nobody was looking and suffered through MIL saying, "I feel so guilty ruining your day" almost as often as she had the tremors.

They finally checked her in for overnight observation at 5pm, and I went home. If my kids weren't so weirded out by adults drinking alcohol, I would have self-medicated. As it was, I met my family at TKD class and we went out for dinner. I don't remember any of that.

From now on I'm not going near the VA hospital without my charger. YES, IT'S ALL ABOUT ME.

Oh, I suppose I should mention that MIL is fine--they think it was low blood sugar and needed another dose of restless leg medicine that messed her up that day. David picked her up in the morning and she's been fine since.

My Two Moms

Well, not really. One's Betty, and one's my mother, but I'm starting to see worrisome similarities. My mother lives one neighborhood north of me, and is older than Betty, but comes from a line of women who live long lives, free of dementia. I'm afraid my mother, 89, is going to break that winning streak. She agreed to give up her car last week, but she's having more and more trouble keeping details straight in her mind. I took her shopping yesterday, along with the Korean student who lives with us, and Ra Youn helped my mother carry her groceries into her house. My mom had her keys in her hand and seemed to be trying to open her front door with the electronic car opener thingy. She covered herself quickly when it didn't work, but still...

We have a follow-up appointment with her neuropsychologist on July 1. I'm going to insist he take a look at her list of medications to see if there's something there that explains this, and that he put her on Aricept or something like it.