## 251214: Brain and body

Well, we sort of solved the "laptop problem", with Mom effectively admitting
defeat on the usage-capability front.  She dictated a couple of emails to
family or close friends, and I sent them off.  They appreciated that.  Now
her laptop has been sitting aside untouched in the several days since, so
maybe wanting to deal with it was a fleeting obsession.  Mom wanted to make
very sure all the recipients were sent one particular autobiographical sort
of article, "My Knitting Life"; there are others of similar ilk elsewhere
around her website.

As I wrote up the emails, she wanted to proofread the messages before sending,
which is a very slow process now ... so there I was kneeling on the crash-pad
at her bedside helping hold the laptop at the right angle for Mom to see, and
the day nurse walked by the open door and gave us just the most incredibly
fond look.  I figured that she was witnessing a tender, deeply caring moment
between mother and son, and just seeing her reaction was one of those odd
emotional moments that come up once in a while.

Mental concentration seems to be seriously diminishing by now, as well as
ability to read with understanding.  Meal menus are still a problem, and I
don't think she attacked the word-puzzles I brought over.  We're referring to
it as late-onset ADD or something, which is ironic because through her life
she had absolutely *no* problem with deep concentration on any project -- that
is evident from her mountainous body of written work.  (Anybody want a genuine
classic IBM Selectric?)  But she now complains about having all kinds of
distracting thought-trains when she's trying to focus on one thing.

She has developed a fairly racking cough, but it's not what they call the
"death rattle" yet.  Just snot.  We were out tooling around the roads the
other day and I tried to illustrate how *I* get rid of random throat phlegm --
there's a sort of technique for starting a cough and then driving it deeper
into the back of the airway and/or sinus openings, followed by a heartfelt
"hawk, ptui" to get rid of it.  The staff is trying to give her Mucinex to
break up the accumulation, along with using a nebulizer with aerosolized
decongestant in the mornings.  Hasn't been working too well, though.

Said outing while discussing "huckin' a loogie" was a long one, without any
insistence on visiting the house again.  Instead, we did all of whole newer
north-side development roads.  It's still under construction up there, but
that never stopped Mom on her routine walker outings in the past.  I threaded
our way around the bits of gravel and debris here and there, and we made the
complete loop and back to the nursing center.  If you didn't look up the
previous "doxx reference", this makes it even easier.  Part of the ongoing
frenetic and totally unsustainable development of the Florida gulf coast.

The other notable issue seems to be continued pain in the neck, every time
she moves her head a particular way.  Apparently this can shoot through the
painkillers sometimes.  Maybe she *did* minorly break something in the fall,
but of course she doesn't remember much about that.  The drug mix is now the
methadone as baseline, and Dilaudid and Tylenol as needed.  I guess the latter
two aren't considered redundant, perhps addressing pain of different types or
sources?  The nurses aren't even sure, they're just following the orders they
get from the Hospice doctors.

Having now done all the I Ching art photography, next is to continue processing
it down to decently viewable images.  Here's a small sampler.  There were
two different versions of this: one as a book only from Harper, and a full
"divination kit" with the book and the 64 cards published by some outfit
called "Fairwinds" who I have so far utterly failed to contact.  I know some
folks at Harper fairly well now; we redirected Mom's royalties to me a while
back, so every six months a token bit o' coin rolls in.

It's not like either of us need the money.  In fact I've been reflecting to
quite a few of Mom's acquaintances just how freakin' *privileged* all of us
are to be hanging out in this very cushy place at all, with the resources to
pull it off.  The initial entry fee is steep, and the ongoing rent ain't to
be sneezed at either.  I see all of that go by since I've been handling the
finances since 2022.  I'm glad I got my Dad into tax-free municipal-bond funds
so many years ago -- that, fueled by two quite frugal parents, helped build
up a good nest-egg for their retirement.  And by some extension, mine, by
working to put it all in trust.  We are indeed the "planners from Hell".

My labors on house content continue; a local resident came by to grab all of
Mom's old circular knitting needles and a few books, for the crafts group
hereabouts.  Again, I'd rather contribute stuff to the locals than just haul
it all to Goodwill or Habitat.  I've been assembling *large* loads for the
hardworking trash / recycle guys; this Monday they'll get their next workout
from what I'm going to put out for them.  Last week I labeled one of the
bins "HEAVY!  and likely to be for several more weeks" just to warn them.
Eventually I plan to pull everything out of drawers and closets and lay it out
on the floors or bed or whatever so it's all visible, and then start spamming
a select group of local residents that they can come over and browse.

Saturday, Mom was eager for another outing and wanted to stop by the house and
then a neighbor's mailbox to drop off a birthday card that she'd managed to
sign reasonably well.  Nothing had particularly changed in the house and she
didn't need to pick up anything, so not sure why that was important... but
then we discovered some mis-delivered mail in the mailbox and realized it
was for the next house over.  Wrangling that together with the birthday card
envelope, Mom seemed to get really confused about who any of it was addressed
to and she kept re-reading the misplaced envelopes trying to figure out where
they should go.  *While* we were sitting in front of the neighbor's mailbox
ready to simply put their mail into.  Again, reading and parsing is difficult.
I finally got her sorted out, we completed the two drops and headed back.  But
it's these moments of what seems to be utter dememtia, mixed with the lucidity
she generally has when outside, that make it a challenge to map out what her
brain can handle or not at this point.

At least doing a bunch of walking around the campus, *plus* pushing the
additional 100+ pound load ahead of me, is giving me some reasonable exercise.
(Did I just call my Mom a "load"?!)  I try to slow down and unweight the whole
chair going over the nastier bumps and expansion joints in the sidewalks, so
it's a lot of start/stop management.  At least the North-side roads are nice
smooth new asphalt rather than the typical beat-to-shit Florida pavement around
the rest of the campus, so there I can get off the sidewalks and just cruise us
along the street at close to my usual solo hiking pace of around 3 mph (with
optional engine-noises from me, because I still do that.  Don't ever grow up,
it's a trap).  Mom's uttered "whee!" more than once.