OLD POSTS I CAN'T BEAR TO LOSE, pt. 3

Life at the VA Hospital (6/25/09)
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, vomited, and ended up with full-body tremors that came every 3 to 4 seconds. Damn spooky, and we ended up spending the rest of the day in the Veterans Administration Hospital ER.

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

So we ate lunch out of the nasty vending machines (her blood sugar was low, a possible contributing factor to the tremors). I spent the day making horrible faces at Betty when nobody was looking (including her) and suffering through her endlessly repeated, "I feel so guilty ruining your day," almost as often as she suffered the tremors.

At 5pm, they finally checked her in for overnight observation, 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 Tae Kwon Do class and we went out for dinner. From now on, I'm not going near the VA Hospital without my iphone charger. Yes, it's all about ME.

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

We're Trying Aricept (6/27/09)
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 printed disclaimers in the box, it causes everything short of INSTANT DEATH.

Betty is worried this morning, for example, because she had a very vivid dream, and she's afraid it's a sign that she's losing her mind. She doesn't remember getting the diagnosis of Alzheimer's (despite having been told it 50 times), but she remembers seeing the diagnosis written on a paper in a doctor's office. Actually, she saw it on our kitchen table. She's sad and worried about it, and can't stop talking about how real the dream was. I got good advice from the cute curly-headed VA doctor: I told her that the fact that she DID figure out that it was a dream is a sign that she's NOT crazy. I on the other hand...