The Georges in Peru

It is getting hard for Amy to stand at all, even for just a few seconds at a time, which is complicating taking care of her.  You can imagine the difficulties that causes.  She's not eating much and her lucid moments are pretty uncommon.  Sarah came to the conclusion that she doesn't want to be a hospice nurse and announced it publicly.  On the positive side of things, I had the best night's sleep in a week, on a mattress on the floor next to our bed.  I realized that I need to put an extra blanket or at least socks on her at night as her feet were pretty cool by morning without her warm husband next to her.

I'm glad to report that last night was markedly better than the previous.  Amy slept, or at least was quiet, for most of the night.  She woke up at 3 am and said, "I want granola with yogurt!"  Yes, my home-made granola is that good.  You want to get up at 3 am to eat the stuff!  I trundled downstairs and prepared a bowl and brought it upstairs half expecting her to say, "I don't want granola now," but she ate the whole bowl full and then went back to sleep!

The kids are home from school because their school is a voting location for Sunday's first round of the presidential election here in Peru.  They are in our bedroom playing a game on the floor next to their mom.

The Good News first:

Amy's maintained her weight for about a week now.  

She's been laughing again.  She has rarely laughed and never cried over the last 2 months.  She still will say funny things (I mean on purpose, not the hallucinations, which are funny too).  She's been laughing frequently over the last day or two.  I think it's always nicer to be around people who laugh.

The Bad News:

She's having more difficulty swallowing and is getting hard to feed during meal times because she reaches for random things (including the food on Mia's plate) and drags her hands through her food.  She'll sometimes chew a mouthful 30 times.  Or 100.

She was verbally unresponsive for much of the last two days.  She couldn't come to supper last night or breakfast this morning because she was too 'out of it'.

Pretty much anything feasible that Amy requests she gets.  This would be approximately half the requests.  When she requested a haircut yesterday, we thought, "We can do that!"  So Sarah and Mia started their careers as cosmonauts, [ahem] cosmetologists yesterday.

As I've mentioned, Amy says a lot of nonsense right now.  She's pretty convinced that we have two more kids, Ellie and Luís (and sometimes Lisa and others).  At first when she spoke like this we didn't know how to react.  Can one laugh at someone whose brilliant mind is now splintered and in disarray?  Interestingly enough, the people who knew Amy well have all said, "Amy would have wanted you to laugh."  So we talked about it as a family and decided, "Go ahead and laugh.  She would have wanted us to laugh."  I think this kind of freaked out a visitor we had yesterday, as if Amy's children were being disrespectful to her (I actually wasn't there but the kids told me later) but it aligns with what we think her wishes would be.  The kids wisely came up with the plan to be less cheeky when guests are present.

Last night Amy slept pretty well, and she's eaten well today, though I've noticed that she is having more difficulty swallowing.  She has lost 10 kg (22 pounds) in the last 20 days, so we are trying hard to get to her eat more, especially now while she doesn't have so much headache and nausea as before.  We've stopped asking if she wants peanut butter on her apples.  We just add it on to boost the calories.