Dern!

Here I do my good deed for today, writing down how to recognize and care-take someone with a mini-stroke, and then Helen has one sometime early today, She wasn't able to carry on a conversation, preferring to stay on her own topic, however irrelevant it was to the reality going on then. There was a lot of "rummaging" through the house and finally a fixation concerning her medication, asking me to write down the date of each am and pm dose lid on a post-it note, then scotch-taping each one down, and still, for all the explaining I did, never "got it." Needless to say the medication has returned to the brown cupboard above the "sweets" refrigerator DON'T LEAVE IT ANYWHERE ELSE! KEEP IT ALL OUT OF HELEN'S SIGHT! She was sort of non-talkative as she rummaged and her speech topics didn't fit the situation. She spent a fair amount of time leaning against the deck rail. She was fine with Scott in her "Scott mode" which has been there all their lives, that is to say, long-term memory and she can do that mode easily because it's a familiar way to act (in both senses of the word.) She has totally forgot yesterday and made a couple of "too close together repeating of sentences. Pray God she comes out of this one. short-term memory is pretty much out of commission as well as holding on to knew information (as evidenced by the pill box incident) I've asked Cindy to go over and get a baseline on Helen's behavior, and to call me Sunday night to let me know if it's 24 hr. time. I hope not, but you do whatever it takes. I hope, Becky, that you can get this message to Chuck, as he and his family will be weekending there. R