Nice To Be Back
The nursing home had given Mom's room away. We've learned that is the policy after a resident has been hospitalized 10 days or more. Such is the business end of long-term geriatric care: no bed stays empty for very long.
The good news is she is back on the third floor which is where she started five years ago - until one such hospital stay just about two years ago. I've since formed the opinion that the third floor was the more efficiently run of the two. Not sure why. In any event, Mom is no longer right next to the unpredictable air conditioner/heating system, a location at which she probably shouldn't have been placed in the first place.
When I saw her on Friday afternoon, she was back on a nebulator. Predictably, Mom was having nothing of it and the plastic nose ring was whipped off in no time. I'm beginning to wonder whether we shouldn't trust Mom's thinking on this. The nebulator is just a jar of water attached to an air pump and reminds me of something that might carry more germs than it's trying to combat.
I played half the movie musical, "My Fair Lady", the soundtrack to which Mom has heard many times and her eyes perked up at the scene that takes place at the Ascot race, the moment when Professor Higgins (in an Oscar-winning performance by Rex Harrison) shouts, "Mother!" across a crowded promenade to a nonplussed Mrs. Higgins (played by Gladys Cooper, who repeats the role she created in the show's original Broadway run.) Very shortly afterward Mom started making that sound she makes after I have been playing youtube selections for any length of time. It is a cross between a moan and a baby's cooing. As her face is registering something other than pain, I can only conclude that it is closer to the baby sound, meaning perhaps that she is registering contentment.
If so, it could be a possible road map back to her speaking again. That would be great. And, just in time for her birthday.
The good news is she is back on the third floor which is where she started five years ago - until one such hospital stay just about two years ago. I've since formed the opinion that the third floor was the more efficiently run of the two. Not sure why. In any event, Mom is no longer right next to the unpredictable air conditioner/heating system, a location at which she probably shouldn't have been placed in the first place.
When I saw her on Friday afternoon, she was back on a nebulator. Predictably, Mom was having nothing of it and the plastic nose ring was whipped off in no time. I'm beginning to wonder whether we shouldn't trust Mom's thinking on this. The nebulator is just a jar of water attached to an air pump and reminds me of something that might carry more germs than it's trying to combat.
I played half the movie musical, "My Fair Lady", the soundtrack to which Mom has heard many times and her eyes perked up at the scene that takes place at the Ascot race, the moment when Professor Higgins (in an Oscar-winning performance by Rex Harrison) shouts, "Mother!" across a crowded promenade to a nonplussed Mrs. Higgins (played by Gladys Cooper, who repeats the role she created in the show's original Broadway run.) Very shortly afterward Mom started making that sound she makes after I have been playing youtube selections for any length of time. It is a cross between a moan and a baby's cooing. As her face is registering something other than pain, I can only conclude that it is closer to the baby sound, meaning perhaps that she is registering contentment.
If so, it could be a possible road map back to her speaking again. That would be great. And, just in time for her birthday.