Snoring...

That's what Mama Marian has been doing for several hours today. After not sleeping for over 24 hours yesterday, this is a good thing.

So, where are we today? Room 4036, John Dempsey/UCONN Hospital. I can answer that question. Mom cannot. The doctors believe she has frontal lobe dementia that could be caused by any one thing or a mix of things. The MRI shows some change in edema, but nothing significantly different from the July scan. This means that the dementia piece was likely set off by the change in meds (addition of heavy narcotics and opiates), but could be resulting from late radiation encephalopathy, damage from the tumor, or a combination of variables. The brain is a mysterious thing and, clearly, we are still in the dark ages of understanding its workings.

So, the confusion, speech problems, personality changes, etc... are here to stay for now. However, they are much better than they were two weeks ago when we first took Mama Marian to the ER. The paranoia is less, the agitation and extreme mood changes seem to have died down, and she has been out of restraints for 24 hours now! I was informed by the attending internist yesterday that we are "lucky" that Mom has "pleasant dementia" for the most part. She is pretty happy much of the time, though difficult to understand, and is quite a talker. She cradles the teddy bear I brought to her and refers to it as "the baby". And, her ferocious sense of humor has been keeping the fourth floor nursing staff very amused. She did rip out another IV yesterday and sent blood spurting everywhere, but it was apparently not in agitation or anger... just due to some confusion.

We are waiting on some formalities right now regarding Mama Marian's discharge placement. Hopefully she will be able to get to the Hebrew Home in West Hartford, where we can work with McLean Hospice. They are supposed to come "interview" her sometime soon and maybe we can get her transferred by early next week.

Hopefully Mama Marian will continue to snore the day away and catch up on some much needed sleep. We are keeping our fingers crossed for continued improvement!