I am heading to Sun City Center. My mom has her appointment with the person we lovingly refer to as "the lady doctor" on Monday. She is mom's Alzheimer's doctor. What I really love about her is how much our appointment with her affects my dad. He just always feels better after seeing her than before.
The way it works is she calls mom in to her office, spends time with her - does the test that gives us 'the number' that categorizes mom's disease in terms of early/mid/last stage. Mom has been in the 23-25 range. The questions are simple - What month is this? What season? I think she has to draw a clock. I know she is asked to remember three words and then a few questions later, tell what those words were.
Then, mom comes out and the rest of us go in and the lady doctor asks us how mom is doing and finds out if what mom said is actually real. We have a sigh of relief each time mom knows how many children she has, where they live and what they do for a living. I hold my breath about the test score, even though intellectually, I know the score is going down.
About 2 years ago, Michelle came with us to the appointment and we all(including dad and the lady doctor) ended up in tears . One of the things the test includes is asking mom to write a sentence, any sentence. The lady doctor showed us the question mom wrote:
"When will I get better?"
This last part made me cry. Sometimes I wish questions weren't sentences and they weren't allowed.
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