Dr. Ha asked Mom whether she would be all right while we three--Kathy, Suzy, and I--were talking to him. She said yes, but he hadn't asked her whether she'd be all right alone. Maybe she meant she would be all right with us while he was talking to us. She looked a little bit uneasy as we left the lobby.
It was clear
that Dr. Ha had read over the notes. He
knew one of Mom’s kids had died of a heart attack although he thought it was
the son. He asked questions and we
three answered until Mom someone came in to say that Mom needed someone to be with her. Since Kathy and I had known Mom longer, we could probably provide more information, so Suzy left.
Dr. Ha asked questions about whether Mom got lost
when she went out, and we said she didn’t go out.
He commented on how physically healthy she was, and it did seem remarkable that in 89 years the
only surgery she’d had was for cataracts and a bladder suspension. He said that an MRI showed there was evidence
that there was a baby stroke, according to the neurologist who wrote up the
report. (Later they told us they had
found no such evidence).
It was established that Kathy had Power of
Attorney.
Our appointment began at about 1:30,
when we were returned to the lobby. Then shortly after that, Dr. Ha came out again and spoke to Mom.
“So did you feel a little nervous being out here
alone?” and Mom said, “A little” or “Sort of.”
“Well, now I’d like to speak to just
you, and if they get nervous, we’ll send you back out to stay with them.”
Mother entered his office at 2:15,
and even though we did get nervous, we didn’t tell. Kathy told us that Mom had been agitated at
first on Sunday but then played the piano and didn’t get up one time during the
Oscars, which she had really enjoyed.
(They were sweet that year.)
Dr. Ha brought Mom out at 3:15. Then all of us were left alone, and we really
got agitated. We knew that Dr. Ha and
some other doctor were consulting, but it seemed like a long time. Mom and Suzy worked on a crossword puzzle
together—one from Mom’s Easy Crossword Puzzle Book.
Looking through a book that was
almost all filled out, I made the verbal slip, “Yes, this has ones you can
still do” instead of saying, “Yes, this still has ones you can do.”
Suzy comforted us a bit with the concept, “The longer we wait, the
closer we are to leaving.” Mom described Dr. Ha as “One of the most
interesting people I’ve ever met.”
Then…we all went in with both Dr. Ha and some imposter, overacting the
part of doctor to make up for the fact that he had never had any medical
training at all! He talked very fast and
as far above our heads as he could throw things—particularly names of medicines
and the proper dosage—Exelon…Nemenda…Galantonim… Rasadrine…Remanil…
What? What?
Then he started doing a test with
his fingers, asking Mom to follow his fingers with her eyes, which she did, and
then he pumped her arms and asked her to resist. At one point he had her sit on the exam
table, and Mom made some comment like, “I’ve liked everyone I’ve met up to this
point,” words that could be ambiguous, but there was no ambiguity to us. We knew she wasn’t including now, not with
Dr. Hammy Imposter in the now.
“You have a cognitive deficit,” he
told Mom, and he used deficit two or three times.
He told us shes had Alzheimer’s mild to moderate.
“I feel bad,” Mom said, "that I
couldn’t remember who the president was because I’ve always liked politics. I’ve always cared.”
But the So-Called Doctor said, “I
think she remembered the current president,” without saying Obama’s name, “but
not the one before.”
I said, “We’re all trying to forget him,” and
the doctor gave me a How Can You Say Such a Rude Thing to a Loyal Member of the
Tea Party look.
It was interesting when he asked her
what her sexual orientation was and she said, “Well, I was married and had five
children, and now Kathy is my partner. I
had a very unhappy marriage, but my kids were my payback.”
“So would you say bisexual?”
“I think so,” Mom said. Mom also said she didn’t want to be
irritating.
The doctor said she could make some
changes in her Mestanon, and Mom, after making sure the Mestanon was what she
had in the every-two-hours case said, “I like my Mestanon just the way it
is.”
We were out at 4:30, and Mom said to
Kathy, “You sure have been good for me, Kathy.”
Then in the car, she started
singing, “I Am Going Home” with its lyrics of deep and stain and how “love
lifted me.” That segued into “Sunday
School is over, and we are going home.
Goodbye! Goodbye! God guard you everyone.” Nothing wrong with her long-term memory.
As for her short-term memory?
“I was told that I was doing very
well,” Mom told us. “I don’t want to brag,
but I think I got an A.”
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