Didn't make it to Florida and Alaska but did get to North Dakota!

Almost made it to Florida and Alaska?????

But not quite. Long story, but Ron's Mom fell and broke her leg in November,  requiring surgery, time in rehab. When she was being discharged from rehab and  because she was still in her recovery phase we brought her home with us to convalesce. Sooo, we cancelled our the first leg of our trip in Florida. As the weeks passed we soon realized that the remainder of our trip would have to be put on  hold as well.

Although Jean was doing wonders with her PT and OT her mental state was all over the place. She was  happy and nice then paranoid and angry. We never knew which Jean we would be waking up to in the morning or going to bed with at night. During the next 6 months I was the target of her anger, so much so, that I had to leave my own home to get her to stop verbally attacking.  It reached an impasse when she went off the rails and accused us of trying to poison her. You ask, why did we put up with this. Easy answer, she has dementia and when she was good she was great so we kept hoping her mood swings would stop and we could all live peacefully together.

During her last weekend with us she was wonderful one minute then hateful and mean the next.On Friday night she accused Ron of keeping her other children away and that we fixed the phone so it wouldn't work. In fact, she was trying to make phone calls on the TV  remote. We gave the number to call Al but she thought we were lying and setting it up with someone else pretending to be Al. He had to convince her it was really him. On that Saturday morning she seemed to be in a good mood but that was short lived. I was changing her bed  when she came into the room looking for her purse. I told her it was by her recliner in the living room and she called me a liar stating that she had put in  her room the night before. I went into the living room with her and there it was by the recliner. She accused me of putting it there to make her look crazy. It was down hill from there. At lunch she accused me of poisoning her pizza. I called Linda and she came down and saw her Mom in action.

 I called her doctor  and told him about her change in mental status. We were instructed to bring her to the ER for evaluation.She acted out there against me as well and was admitted to EBHS for evaluation. In the end the psychiatrist determined she could not go back to our home or to hers either. She was discharged to the Arbors and currently resides in their Memory Unit with other dementia and Alzheimer's residents.

The entire situation still makes us sad that it did not work out as Ron and I had hoped. She is physically well but not mentally and we have come to grips that no matter what we did we could not change that.

Once she had been at the Arbors for three weeks and seemed to be acclimating well we decided to take a short break and go to North Dakota. Linda is watching over  Jean and could get in touch with us if needed. So we packed the MH and left on  July 25th.