My mother was diagnosed with vascular dementia in 2010. This is a blog about coming to terms with her absent mind.

Sunday 11 September 2011

Sunday again

I was so tired last night I think I slept in the same position all night. I'm as stiff as a board this morning! Ma did get up a couple of times but I managed three blocks of decent sleep. After the effects of watching the rubgy yesterday morning and the subsequent accusations about having footballers in the living room, I was a bit apprehensive about the backlash from watching a combination of Strictly and Dr Who. However, so far so good.  In the way that these days I feel if I want to store a new recipe in my head another one has to go, hopefully watching both the Coronation Street and the Emmerdale omnibus will have pushed any other stuff out of her head.

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What would you like for breakfast Mum?

Erm not that thing like yesterday. Something lighter.

Not a poached egg and waffle?

No thank you. But the egg was very nice.

A poached egg then?

Yes please.

On a potato waffle?

Ooh yes that would be very nice...

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On the eating front, she did quite well yesterday. Along with the aforesaid egg and waffle for lunch I did some leeks and cabbage in a blue cheese/cream sauce, added some chopped ham and topped it with diced steamed new potatoes. Slung in the top oven until crisp and brown on top. It was delicious. She was resistant to start with but ate it all in the end. Tea was sticky toffee pud and cream. Along with a couple of milky coffees and a small milk shake I'd call that a successful day.

Thinking of making a carrot cake and poaching a chicken today. Lots and lots of things you can do with poached chook.

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It's been a fairly difficult afternoon with the now usual tears etc. It began with a lot of agitation and garbled talk and the refusal to eat the sandwich I'd made. Then with a very stubborn look on her face she headed for the tv where she asked the Hairy Bikers for some of the soup they were making. Tears followed until I eventually managed to persuade her to go for a nap. 20 minutes later she got up again and we watched Songs of Praise where she was convinced her GP was in the choir and we are now watching the news reports on 9/11. Each time this is news to Ma and she is horrified all over again. Each time I see it I remember and I'm horrified all over again.

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I've made a sort of cheat's Spanish chicken type thing. Ma wouldn't be able to eat proper chorizo so I've used ordinary pork sausages, a couple of tbs paprika, a bit of chopped chilli, garlic, chicken thighs, onion, a tin of ratatouille (for speed and hopefully more digestible peppers), a tin of chopped toms, Fino sherry and then plenty of finely chopped parsley to finish. I'll give Ma some with a bit of cous cous, which she probably won't like. I'll have mine later sans cous cous but will add olives.

I've got all the ingredients to make the carrot cake but with all the furore this afternoon I haven't had a chance to make it. Tomorrow. Hopefully.

3 comments:

  1. At the Nursing home, I work with a lot of People with Dementia. I find that most of them can get really upset by the news. Game shows seem to be good(I think because everyone is so happy), old movies and anything with music in it.
    Lunch sounds divine. Almost as divines as say.... If you posted your Carrot cake recipe :-)

    Peace

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  2. Oh, God, Bee, the waffle made me laugh. She could always share it with the footballers if she changes her mind again. Sorry, hon. Know it's hard, really I do. You make a hard subject digestible though. :)

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  3. Mike - she will watch game shows for a bit but gets fed up after a while, I think all that happy bouncy stuff overwhelms her eventually. She doesn't like films any longer, she can't concentrate on the plot for long enough and gets very irritated. The best sort of porgramme is the 'magazine' type where the subject matter changes fairly frequently. Unfortunately there isn't a 'magazine' channel. So I often resort to Cruise.tv and she relives all their cruise holidays :)

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