Thursday, March 25, 2010

The Week That Was


With every intention of doing some blog writing this week, here we are on Thursday with no updates since Sunday. It's all inside my head, I promise! Hmm, I think I heard that from a few patients. It's been a less than easy week at Smith Care U.S.A. The players, Ben (f-i-l), Marty (m-i-l), the Mr. and a few who won't be named have been busy.
Ben was seen by the behavioral neurologist for the second phase of his assessment at the Henry Ford Memory Clinic. It was about three hours long, this following a 2 hour assessment by the nurse practitioner the week prior. He did very poorly on all of the testing, by the finish Ben was crying and paranoid; asking what "they" had done to him to cause him to be so confused. In short, it seems he was unsuccessful pretty much across the board. Finally he has a diagnosis of Lewy Body Dementia which is something of a crossbred Alzheimer's Disease and Parkinson's Disease. Ironically, Parkinson's meds makes Alzheimer's worse and vice versa. After this appointment Dean took his mom to an appointment at the pain clinic which was not pleasant either, he had to help her disrobe. By the time he got home literally 12 hours later he was wrung out. I've never seen him quite so low. Until...
Sunday evening he called his mom to check in and was told that his dad took two falls on Sunday afternoon. Which was very worrisome until...
Monday evening he called to check in and was informed that in the middle of the night his dad had gotten up, dressed and left the apartment while his mom slept. A neighbor found him and brought him back and shortly thereafter, the police stopped in to check on them. Dean had installed door alarms which mysteriously are broken. We ordered new ones online. This was almost more than he could stand until...
Starting on the guardianship process we are informed that some family members may decide to challenge him. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be anyone who wants to take the job; only want to contest him doing it.
So you can see that the Mr. has had a rough several days. Haven't we all had those times when it seems like you can't quite dust yourself off from something before something else knocks you down? Tomorrow he has a 6:30 a.m. MRI for his dad at Wyandotte Hospital and a 9:00 a.m. EMG in West Bloomfield.
Please pray for Dean? Strength and wisdom of course. But also, as a great fan of laughter and ridiculousness, pray for joy.

6 comments:

Amrita said...

So sorry to hear about your in laws and Dean 's struggle. Its a very hard job. I have experienced it.

Will be praying

Stacy said...

Will be praying for Dean....and You!

Jada's Gigi said...

What a week! will be praying..for everyone!

KayMac said...

Praying for all that stuff and more!

Pat said...

"the prayer go up and the blesssings come down..and the house on the rock stands firm!"

Margie said...

sending prayers up!