...with the auntie. She is in a nursing/rehab. facility in south GA. Blames me and cousin for her 'misfortune', thinking she is being held hostage against her will, not understanding/remembering she surely agreed to being transferred from hospital to a therapy center. The reason she spent such an inordinate amount of time as an inpatient was her unwillingness to agree. I continue to be surprised that she was a patient for at least eleven days, knowing how so much surgery is done on an out-patient basis with a bed occupied less than 23 hours, due to rigorous health insurance company demands/requirements.
She was seriously aggravated with me when I arrived on Wednesday. Even more oppositional and argumentative than usual, and 'usual' can be a big whopping lot. I told several people of the word I apparently made up to describe her: mule-ish. I've never heard it anywhere, not sure it is in the dictionary, but completely applicable to the situation. When you know her personality, and hear the word, you see how apt it is in describing an individual who can be thoroughly obstreperous. Even before this latest crisis, she could be highly opinionated, with great certainty.
After I left her eating lunch, desperate to get on the road, and start driving home, I called my cousin. To say: "There can be joy in memory loss. You can get to the point that the disease removes the reminders you retain of who you were before this horror started encroaching." I was thinking of caring for my mom, and how a person with 'forgetting disease' can get to the place where they no longer realize what has been lost. No longer fighting, not miserable, not frustrated, not hostile with caregivers and people who are trying to do their best under difficult circumstances to provide for safety, well being, basic needs.
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