Moving Along

I tease my husband that I had to take a blogging break to give him time to catch up.  The real reason is that my mind has been a whirling mess of thoughts for the past month.  It's difficult, if not impossible, to pluck one of those things out of the swift winds to focus on and write about.

The pit of holiday depression sucked me and I have stayed there.  Not by choice, but for reasons beyond my understanding at this time.  So, I try to focus on what I can and while I climb back out one, tiny inch at a time.

Today, we finally saw a little movement in one of the issues we have been facing.

As I shared last month, my mother-in-law has been having some problems with her memory.  At Christmas, we had the opportunity to spend a couple days with her.  During that time, we were able to see first hand how "forgetful" she was and how much effort she was putting into covering up her problem.

Several times she would forget conversations we had 30 minutes prior.  She struggled to call people by name.  She repeated several steps in fixing dinner, making it easy to see she had no memory of having just completed simple acts 10 minutes before.

We took time to talk very purposefully to her and my father-in-law before packing up to leave.  She admitted that her memory wasn't as sharp as it used to be.  It wasn't until then that I was able to get her to admit and not make excuses for not knowing who I was when I called her a week earlier.  She couldn't deny it, nor the dozen other examples she gave us.

However, she was certain that her memory issues were directly related to having varicose veins removed 1-2 years ago.  She also seemed very content with the solution my husband's sister gave her, a bottle of ginkgo.  Had I mentioned that Kent's siblings have been what seemed like a "head in the sand" type of approach to this problem?

She did visit the doctor who removes the veins a few days after we talked to her.  Thankfully, that doctor was very honest with her.  He told her that her vein removal had nothing to do with it and referred her back to her PCP. 

Her PCP did blood work and checked for possible blood flow problems.  All were negative for anything that might cause her problem.  Things were moving along, but still with no sense of urgency and with two people who aren't super great with talking to doctors.

Today was her follow up with the PCP.  We learned this evening that Kent's sister has finally taken a more proactive role in the doctor's appointments.  Finally!!!!  She is the only sibling who lives close to their parents.

She shared with my husband that their mom had failed the verbal testing for Alzheimer's.  I think that was the key to opening the eyes and ears of the family. Today's visit appears to have realigned the thinking of the majority of the family.

The next step will be to do a new MRI and then compare with the one she had a few years back. 

It's scary to think about what we might be facing.  However, there is a sense of relief. 

Even if I can't seem to remove myself from the pit that I'm in, at least I can see something in life is moving along.  What looked really impossible a couple weeks ago is finally showing some progress. Now...if only I could see progress like that in everything.