Activities room

They were getting ready to sing "O Come All Ye Faithful" when I showed up this morning. Max, the activities director, had distributed porcelain bells to a favored few, and I was happy to see that May was one of them. She was poised, bell at the ready, but suddenly everyone was calling her name and pointing toward me. She looked up and smiled, and searched for someone to take her bell.

We sat on the bench outside the activities room and she asked me what I had been doing.

A little hope

Looked in May's closet this afternoon and there were no clothes. Looked in all the drawers of her dresser--nothing there. Asked a staff person and she said all May's stuff was hanging in the laundry room. They keep it there now, because she was putting clothes on and off all day. Seen that, I said.

She'd wear three pairs of panties, two pairs of pants -- often with the shorter pair on top so you could see all four cuffs -- and usually three sweaters one on top of the other. They said they'd put her in her pajamas at night, and she'd take them off and sleep in a pair of slacks. Yeah, did that at home, every night. But they've put a stop to all that by taking the clothes away. Said she's more settled now, not nearly as restless. And she was. I'd already noticed it. "Settled" was a good choice of words. She smiled. Seemed relaxed. Very nice visit.

Stopped at the nurse's station on my way out and commented on the change. They said it's been like that for a few days now. Said they had changed the time of day they were administering some of her meds, thought it had "evened her out."

So they're doing something. Thinking about the things she does, and how they can change them. Getting her settled, evening her out. Day after tomorrow it'll be six weeks. There's an adjustment period, they said. Right, of course. Six weeks sounds about right. A little hope, for the first time in a long, long time.