Mom HAD lost weight but now she has gained weight. She's up 4 pounds since Christmas.
She did have a UTI but now she doesn't have one.
The skin tear she gets from sliding in her gerichair is healing. The aides place her back in bed after meals so she's not slipping on that chair so much anymore, and she has an air mattress again.
Is this improvement ... good?
While I understand why part of me asks that question, the answer is yes, it's good. She's not sick, she's healing her body still. Even when she wasn't, she still was enjoying things and everybody at the home seems to like her very much. She gets a banana with her breakfast every day (loves a banana) and ice cream every day, too (adores that).
She's utterly cute and sweet and friendly.
She's just demented, immobile and helpless.
I have been imagining how Mom affects her local economy. Her helplessness provides employment for a facility owner, director, business manager, office manager, social worker, contract supervising doctor and his staff and a hospice doctor, a hospice nurse and aide, three shifts of CNAs, a treatment nurse, an LPN, an RN, a kitchen manager, kitchen assistants, a plant manager, a janitor, a laundry worker, a counselor, an activities director, physical therapist, the vendors who supply the food and equipment and ordinary services like phone and cable TV, a pharmacist, Medicare and health insurance clerks, people who own and work at gas stations along my route to see her, floral departments in two Krogers and their vendors who supply the roses and the orchids I buy once or twice a week.
A lot of people have jobs because my Mom has dementia.
