... 'one of those days': when I felt like I spent more time going and getting back than actually being there. Driving to south Georgia and home again on a beautiful spring day, in order to help my auntie keep a couple of appointments she needed to attend. I got up to leave home before it was light enough to see, enjoyed seeing the sun come up over the farm land, fields and pastures. Looking across the distance of newly plowed or still fallow fields to the tree line as the sky changed from darkest black to rainbow shades of vermilion, peach, and finally palest blue.
The most color in the landscape besides the newly greening leaves was many trees along the right of way with blooming vines of yellow Carolina jasmine. Tiny bright trumpet shaped flowers en masse high in the tops of evergreen pines and still bare deciduous trees. There were a few places where wisteria was in evidence, with vast swaths of lavender blooms covering everything in sight, as the invasive plant gradually attempts to choke out all over vegetation.
The auntie had two appointments: one with a doctor, and the other a follow up visit to her dentist. We went to lunch, and then to the doctor's appointment. Though she has been to this office several times, we had not actually seen the doctor, having always met with a nurse for evaluation and renewing of prescriptions. It can be tedious, building a relationship with new medical personnel, having to re-hash history, and explain things that impact current health situation. But it was good to finally met the doc. Other appt. was to get a new tooth, following the installation of a temporary crown when she saw the dentist in January.
The oddest thing: when she returned to the assisted living facility where she resides, has been living since last June, she claimed to have no knowledge of her residency. She asked why we were going there and I, with much trepidation and anxiety told her: "You live here." She was insistent that she had never been there before. Making me really worried that she would refuse to get out of the car, insisting that she was not going in the building. Certain that even though she has been living here since last summer, there was no reason in the world for her to want to be there.
When I turned the car off, and started getting out to go inside, I wondered to myself what I would do if she simply did not get out. My first thought was that I would call the facility, ask for someone on the staff to come out and help me persuade her to go in. If it required a rolling chair, and brute strength to bodily remove her from my car and take her in - I was willing to participate in that as well. I was profoundly thankful when she got out and without hesitation walked with me in the door, all the while insisting that was not where she lived.
If you had been a witness, you would have seen a palpable sigh of relief when the door closed behind us. No one gets in or out of the building when the door locks after you - coming as well as going. Due, as you might imagine, to the necessary precaution of keeping the memory impaired residents safe from wandering. As we made our way down the hall, staff members were there to welcome her. She recognized them, even though she claimed to have never been there. She was easily distracted by their request that she go along to the dining room to get ready to eat. I thankfully made my exit.
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