One of the featured Longreads last week is on the subject of schizophrenia. In the 1990s, scientists declared that schizophrenia and other psychiatric illnesses were pure brain disorders that would eventually yield to drugs. Now they are recognizing that social factors are among the causes, and must be part of the cure. Here’s the part […]
Mom’s friend from church called this afternoon. She began by asking if I had talked to anyone at Woodland Terrace lately. I told her that I called them or they called me just about every day. She wanted to know if I knew anything about progress with mom’s application for Medicaid because the night nurse […]
This afternoon at 3:43PM PDT I called Woodland Terrace in another attempt to talk to mom. Someone named Marty answered and I asked to speak to Kathie Gagne, in room 207 on the West wing. Marty asked if I knew if she was in the window bed or the hallway bed, and I said I […]
I finally was able to talk to an actual doctor this morning about mom and the news is good. I talked to Dr. Escander — not sure about the spelling there — and he was very nice and extremely helpful and kind. Here are the notes that I took from our conversation: He said that […]
My sister just sent me this email: I received a call Wednesday night around 11:30pm from Crystal, the nurse on duty. She called to tell me that Mom’s bed alarm went off and that when they got to her room , Mom was on her knees on the floor. She did not appear to have […]
My sister sent this email to me and copied Janis Stovall and Janice Day at Grace Manor Hi, All. Dr. Moore, psychiatrist at Halifax, came to visit Mom around 1pm yesterday. When I asked him what he thought, he said he thinks she has a combination of some dementia/confusion/paranoia with possible severe depression. She was […]
A friend of mine asked me what was happening with my mom at the beginning of February. Here is the reply I sent him: It’s a long story. Something happened to her brain, but it wasn’t a stroke. They’re not really sure. She’s been having memory problems for about two years, but I just was […]
I sent this email to Sophia Mas at Stewart-Marchman a day after a very long and difficult phone call with her and Dr. Caliendo. Dr. Caliendo was only on the phone for a few minutes and then Sophia called us and explained in detail what he had been saying. It wasn’t until many, many months […]
I sent this email to Sophia Mas at Stewart-Marchman: Hello, Sophia, I am again copying my sister [name redacted] on this email. I unfortunately do not expect my mom to snap back to her functioning self very quickly. It would be difficult for me to qualify exactly what “her functioning self” might be, because — […]