respublica

Off again

My mom has taken a turn for the worse, she was taken to the hospital in Wichita yesterday so I am headed off this morning by car.

Which way to Wichita

I flew to Wichita today to visit with my mother. 

How odd it is to fly to Wichita by way of Chicago.  It seems out of whack, heading northeast when you end up southwest.  But, that's the state of air travel for those of us in St. Louis.

Daystar-Afrizo

A Gospel singing group from Daystar University in Nairobi Kenya, Afrizo, has been touring the United States recently.  Their music is a mixture of east, central and south African traditions.  Yesterday they sang in one of the rooms in the U.S. Capitol and our daughter, Elizabeth and Dale attended.  They were able to meet the Vice-Chancellor of the University, Godfrey Nguru as well as the entire group.

Click for a much better view of all the smiling faces.

Chancellor Nguru, Lizzie and Dale.

The Afrizo hopes to raise $350,000 on the U.S. tour for scholarships which would enable promising students without financial means to attend college.

Lizzie said that they drew a lot of congressional workers and while they were singing staffers and other visitors to the capitol began randomly jumping in to sing with them.

Dale's Beer

Wouldn't you just know it.  Dale makes a trip out to Washington DC and finds his new most favorite beer.  And, this is someone who isn't really a beer drinker.

 

Dale's Pale Ale, winner of beer tasting contests, but hard to get outside the local brewing area.  I doubt he'll be allowed to take any of these cans onto the plane when he comes home.

The apples of our eyes

This was a huge apple picking day, so many people we know headed out to the orchards including Christian, Connor, Lizzie, Katie, Charlie and Stephanie.

They're being raised right out there in DC, Go Cardinals.

Moving mom-the result

A number of people have asked me what the end of the story is regarding moving my mother.  I've put off posting about this the past couple of days because it has been so exhausting I had no energy to relive it.

After moving her into assisted living and having to move her out after three days because the place quickly discovered she needed more attention than they could provide and then placing her in a hospital for 9 days we were really under time constraints to find her a home.  The original plan was to move her to Meridian Village in Glen Carbon, a beautiful place which recently opened a memory care area.  The problem was, Meridian is not set up administratively to accept people as quickly as we needed. 

Which meant we began scouring Kansas and the St. Louis area for something else.  My sister and I spent hours on the internet, the phone, texting trying to decide what to do.  Then a miracle happened.  A nurse my sister knows heard about our situation and recommended that we look into Comfort Care Homes, a way of caring for dementia and Alzheimer's people in real homes in real neighborhoods.  Comfort Care Homes was begun 14 years ago by a man who could not find a place for his mother.  He now has a handful in Kansas and although he is asked constantly to add more, he only wants to run those he can operate well. 

My sister called, found there was an opening, and the people there immediately sent a nurse to the hospital to evaluate my mother and within hours we learned she would be accepted, pending a visit from my sister to check out the place.  We didn't get our hopes up, we've assumed too much the past few weeks.  We also went back and forth on the pros and cons of bringing my mother closer to me in St. Louis. 

It turned out that this is a perfect situation.  Well, maybe not perfect, nothing is perfect anymore when a family member is in this state, but it is better than anything we've ever seen or read about.  My mom is now in a single family ranch home in a normal neighborhood.  They take only 6 people, 3 men and 3 women who all have their own bedrooms but share the living room, kitchen, and backyard.  There is also a house dog, a Schnauzer named Luke who my mother is crazy about.  What a life line, a dog, something my mom has missed having for a long time.

The backyard is full of trees and grass with a nice patio holding an umbrella table and chairs.  There is a fence which is secured so no one wanders off.  It's like living a normal life.  Each of the six people have their own Laz-y-Boy from which to watch tv.  The staff has been with the house since it's beginning 14 years ago and everything runs on a schedule so as to keep the people stimulated, but not too stimulated, rested, but not always resting, food is prepared in the kitchen and everyone eats at the same kitchen table. 

The nurse who originally recommended the place has a brother who is a geriatric physician who makes house calls so there is no need to make visits to a doctor's office. 

We were asked not to call for about 3 days after mom arrived so they could get her acclimated and assimilated.  She is still confused, but not anxious like she was before.  She thinks she has her plane or train or bus ticket and is going to be traveling home to Chicago.  The Chicago she remembers from her childhood, not the Chicago she lived in during most of her life. 

She's not going to get better, but a huge part of being happy or at least being at peace with things is having something to do and someone to love.  Now she has people to talk to and eat with in a real house and she has a dog to love, a dog who seems to really really enjoy the attention.

Color?

We bought a black metal sculpture at the Clayton Art Fair this past weekend.  We were taken by Randall Reimer's work on our first pass through and after walking the entire fair and having dinner we went back to see if that feeling still held.  It did.

What we liked about Reimer's work was the sense of seeing liturgical or ecclesiastical images which you might see on altar cloth or clerical stoles.

Certainly this was not the artist's intent, but when I asked him if he realized there was an element of the ecclesiastical in the sculpture, he immediately nodded...with a rather coy smile.

In any event, we want to hang this piece on our entry wall.  It is black.  What color backdrop?  Currently the wall color is a rather non-descript linen.  The wall shows from the street and we want a color which would highlight the art without being distracting.

Why can't I decide?  I certainly watch enough HGTV. 

We purchased the Hayward which is bigger than it looks on display.  I notice Reimer's photos use a gold-ish background color.

rhenry designs

Senior care-back to the drawing board

Less than a week ago we drove to Kansas to help move my mother into assisted living. 

That lasted 3 days.

On Labor Day mom decided she was just going to walk out of the place, took her purse and headed down the driveway.  When they caught up with her there was something of a battle which my mother initiated, but left her with lots of anxiety and panic.  The assisted living people insisted my sister stay with her all day/all night until she could be taken to a hospital for comprehensive evaluation and testing.

Since Tuesday she has been in a hospital undergoing a week of geriatric medical and psych tests and we learn she will not be able to return to assisted living.  Which means we now have to move out of the apartment everything we moved in last Friday.

What to do now?  My blogging has been light since we returned from Kansas because each day brought more bad news on the mother front.  There appears to be no memory care within a one and a half to two hour drive of Emporia so I have been working on finding a place in the St. Louis area. 

This has been the most exhausting experience, an experience which brings little but bad news.  Several times yesterday I found myself heading for something in another room and could not remember what.  I'm so tired, my sister is so tired.  What to do with mom?  Will there be a place?  I wake up just as tired as when I went to bed.

Today I paid a visit to Meridian Village in Glen Carbon, a beautiful comprehensive senior facility.  In May they opened a memory care area which is what I toured.  Meridian Village is part of Lutheran Senior Services of St. Louis, longtime senior care providers.  We don't know yet if mom will qualify, that will depend on what the current Kansas hospital evaluations say. 

I've noticed that elderly people who are moved do not see beautiful surroundings, they see change and it scares them, their anchor has been yanked up.

We aren't getting our hopes up, we've been crushed too much lately, but we are actively praying that this will be the place. 

First day of pre-school

Christian is a Blue Bird

While Christian begins his education days, his great gramma struggles in her new surroundings while the rest of us can only watch and accept lessons from the school of life.

From one place to another

It took most of the day, but we got my mother moved into assisted living today and I have to say, this is such a nice place and the people, both staff and other residents couldn't have been more welcoming and interested in our comings and going.

She had a good day, kept up with us, but now she's there by herself for the first time.  But, someone is coming to take her down to dinner and introduce her to other people.  We hope her basic shyness and panic over new things can be overcome because everyone seems very content and, yes, happy.

We packed up her former place

And trucked over to the new

I need to get a picture of the balcony tonight.  It is really terrific

So here is the balcony