Mom Update, September 17, 2011, Saturday

Mom’s update Saturday, September 17, 2011

I started the day with mom and she was sitting up in the bed and almost done with breakfast. This is the first time that she was given breakfast that early. I had brought breakfast for her but wasn’t able to give it to her. After breakfast I took out the IPad and put the baseball multiplication game on for her. There are three steps to play the game and mom kept asking me what to do next. I took out an index card and wrote down the three steps. 1. Touch the pitcher. 2. Enter the answer on the calculator on the left. 3. Hit OK. I taped the card onto the side of the IPad and just visually prompted her. She read the step and then performed the action. She did occasionally forget what order to read the steps even though they were written on the card in a top down order. She kept at it for over an hour.

Next, I opened solitaire. She did very well. I only prompted her a little. Something weird that I noticed is that the longer she does any activity the more confused she gets. She does better in the beginning of a task and at some point she gets overloaded and doesn’t know what to do. She played few games of solitaire and then I put on her favorite program, word jumble. She unscrambles words and puts the letters in order and then presses the “next word” button. She can do this entirely independently.

The CNA came in to take mom out of bed. Dad came and we both went back into the room with mom once she was in her wheel chair. I put her makeup on and put a few items on her tray table. I left her the sewing cards. She loves to do this. It also is a good fine motor skill as well as motor planning. It reinforces her ability to organize (placing the string in the very next hole and being consistent with the pattern). Dad was all dressed for the parade and mom loved the way he looked and told him he looked handsome.

The parade was great and dad was in his own car leading the parade with three other older members (each in their own car). It was great. Terry stayed with mom and told me that she brought her old TV DVD’s and they watched Carol Burnett and My Three Sons. Mom liked them and they had a great time together. Terry told me that the CNA put mom to bed very early and I explained to Terry that she could say “NO”. It’s ok to tell them you want her to stay up a little longer. They actually put her to bed before she even ate dinner. The weekend people are not the same as the weekday crew and you really need to keep on top of things so they don’t take advantage. Terry went through the TV channels with mom and had her practice with the remote.

Terry set mom up for the night, set the timer on the TV, took out her hearing aids and left for the night.

Peace and be well,

~Claud