October 20, 2023
Last night around 5:45 pm my dad comes up the stairs saying there is something wrong. Eric and I dart down. He says my mom is choking. I get down there and it seems like she has cleared it. She is shaken. My dad said he was calling for me but I didn’t hear it. Eric and I sit with them for awhile. It seems like a small piece of carrot got caught in her throat. I sat with her for awhile to make sure she was OK and then went back upstairs.
My mom is declining faster these days. Yesterday’s choking incident has shaken me a bit even though I try not to let it. I’m noticing she is weaker now. Her hands are very shaky. She seems very tired.
I’ve been using her ability to dress/undress herself as some sort of progress marker. For the past week or so I have noticed she seems confused when she tries to get her arm out of her sleeve. This morning, as she was changing out of her pjs, she couldn’t figure out how to pull her arm out of the sleeve. I held the end like I normally do and she just couldn’t grasp how to get it out. I asked her to put her arms up and we pulled it off like you pull off the top with a toddler. Throughout this entire process it has felt like watching development but in reverse. The changes are slow and seemingly imperceptible but when I reflect back to just 2 years ago (when they moved in) she was dressing herself in the morning and evening without a problem. Then it moved to me helping her dress in the morning. Then to me helping her put on her pjs at night. Now it’s me taking a more active role in the changing, showing her and helping her do it.
Last night after I tucked her in, I talked to my dad. He was telling me how bad the choking incident was. How she was shaking. How he patted her o the back to help move it. I said it seems like she’s getting worse much more quickly these days. His eyes welled with tears and so did mine. There’s not much to say other than that. Two people watching the woman they love most in this world slowly decay away, feeling helpless, powerless and confused.
Eric has made a plan for future emergencies. It’s so good that he’s pushing it because it’s important and sometimes I just want to bury my head in the sand. We will set up an Alexa down there and I’ll put a large note by it that says “Alexa help” so my dad knows what to say. It will set off an alarm on all the Alexa’s in our house. He tested it last night and it works very well. We just have to find the Alexa we gave them. My dad didn’t like it (for some reason we don’t remember) but it’s important. Eric’s right. This way if something like this happens in the future, we can be down there quicker. My dad yelled for me, but we didn’t hear him so he had to come up the stairs which takes time for him. Luckily it was all OK.