Recovery

In celebration of Mother's Day, Sister and I took Mom and Ethel out to eat this past Saturday. The astute among you might have noticed that this precious moment is a week late, and those who personally know the furback would probably be more surprised if this were not the case.

Still, it turns out, this is exactly as planned. When I ran it past Mom, she opted to put it off a week so we weren't fighting crowds. This seemed like perfectly sound reasoning to me. That it played directly into my innate tendencies had nothing at all to do with my total acquiesce.

What do you mean, "Yeah, right?" Really, it didn't!

Anyway...

We went to the Shiny and New TGIFriday's in our area. The staff was excellent, the dinner delicious, and Sister's salad was completely hosed. OK, not everything was perfect, but the manager fixed the salad - and the bill - so no big deal as far as the meal goes.

It is a big deal, though, to get Ethel up, and dressed, and made up, and out of the door and loaded into the car and unloaded at the restaurant, all the while trying to keep her sightseeing in check. All of that takes a toll on energy levels, and on noone's more than her own. For an hour and a half out, she paid back the entire day Sunday sleeping it off.

Even at that, I'm glad that we can still take her out.

Here, Kitty Kitty

The fates, as if to taunt me for bothering to notice, send the visions back to Ethel. I walk in the back door last night to hear, "Here, Kitty Kitty! *tk tk tk*, come on, get down from there!"

The little black cat, it seems, was hiding in the shade of the ceiling light. Ethel was swatting at it with a back scratcher.

There is no cat.

I've been giving her one Seroquel in the evenings, I'm going to add a pill to the morning for a couple of days to see if that settles her back out. In the meantime, I'll keep an eye out for imaginary hairballs in my shoes.

Placid Waters

Sometime back, about 4 to 6 weeks ago, we added a new medication to Ethel's chemical cocktail. Since then, it's been mostly quiet times. The imaginary friends have all but stopped, as have the jerks. Oh, there's still the occasional moment of talking to the walls in a nearly-asleep haze, but the visions while wide awake and otherwise lucid haven't been there.

Here's to modern medicine.

Don't Pick It, You'll Only Make It Worse

There are scabs, and then there are scabs. Diabetics sometimes heal slower than normal folk. Old people heal slower than younger people. Injuries on certain parts of the body heal slower than other parts. Picking at it only makes it worse.

So when you have, say, a scalp abrasion on a 90-year-old diabetic scab picker, you have an injury that could potentially take a serious chunk of time to heal. And has.

Ethel is also a pack rat. Anything that has ever been thrown away has been done by someone else, usually out of prudence or desperation. Still, no matter how much sorting and weeding we do, she still has a near bottomless reserve of hiding places out of which she can draw the most bizarre stuff.

So it comes to be that, after picking the scab off -yet again - I find her, mystery tube of goop in hand, ready to apply it to her scalp.

"What the hell is that?" I ask in alarm, not recognizing it.

Something the doctor gave her years ago. 13 years ago, it expired in 19-by-God-97. And is (was?) an anti-fungal for Lord knows what, I don't know where it's been hiding since then but it's gone now.

"The doctor gave it to me, it must be OK to use," she protests. I have no idea which doctor, or even if he's still practicing this long after, but that doesn't matter to her. To her mind, one tube of salve is as good as any other, and even better if a Doctor said so. She won't get that they don't all have the same stuff in them.

I coated the spot with A&D instead.