Mom’s Update, “Not Bad, Not Great”

Mom’s Update, “Not Bad, Not Great” 

   I am going to do a first here and try in the shortest possible blog I can, update you on myself as well as mom’s medical status .  Because I’m known for the shortest blog post around, right? The past few days have boomed with medical activity in the family and will start with mom.  Just today mom’s diagnoses was upgraded to Acute Depression or as the article written by, Harold Cortez on EzineArticles.com’s/1243308 article, “Definition of Acute Depression” defines it, “Acute Depression or aka: major depressive disorder or clinical depression. It is one of the most severe forms and less common as compared to the all other forms. The exact cause has still not been discovered. Psychological changes, biological changes, stress, loss of loved ones, physical disability, divorce and environmental changes are the common causes.”  Mom has been avoiding phone calls, not going grocery shopping, skipping church,  sewing club, TOP’s (weight loss group), etc. and also sleeping 18-20 hours a day for about the past several weeks.  Myself, my brothers, her sister, even her cardiologist have  told her that she needs to contact her psychiatrist, yesterday.  She did see her psychologist last week but from what I can tell the mentioned issues never came up.  Mom’s  whole standing on this is that, “Their busy and I don’t want to bug them, I’m waiting to give the meds a change, It’s only been 2-1/2 weeks, I’m waiting for my next  appointment.”   Mom, it’s been awhile already and your next appointment is not for another 3 weeks?  Luckily, she did make a walk in appointment with her psychiatrist for today and this is when her diagnosis was upgraded to the Acute Depression status. One thing we need to watch for is mom trying to delay this process.  Already mom has delayed taking Taffy back twice and tried again today when she called to update me on the doctor’s visit.  So we are going to have to make sure mom makes it to he appointments, is up and moving, on the down/low.  The psychologist even mentioned to mom that in order for her to keep in front of her depression and not let it take her over even more, that she is upping her anti-depressant from 10 mg to 20 mg a day, initially she started off on 5 mg and only because they wanted to see how (1) they affected her and (2) how they affected her other 11-13 meds.  They also have come up with a list of things that mom has to do daily to keep going and not fall into 4 hour days, they include,

• Get out of bed early.
• Shower, Do hair and Make-Up (If that’s normal).
• Eat three meals a day.
• Pick two (max) of the things you enjoy most (church, sewing club, TOP’s, Coffee with #2 son) and do them.
• Also, pick a room a day to clean and only do that room.  Since she has seven rooms with the bathrooms it’s perfect.
• Get Taffy back and walk her three times a day to start and then add daily fourth walk after 3-4 weeks.

These items should help get mom over that hump in her life that’s got her so far down in the dumps that she’s asking us to care for her pride and joy, Taffy.  The love you see in these two when they have not seen each other in a while is true love.  Taffy jumps all over the place, will not even allow me to pick her up again for fear its to take her away from mom and as for

mom, she starts talking like a little school girl and she glows with joy when their in the same room.  When I went over to mom’s this morning to drop Taffy off and take mom to coffee just to get her out of the house for a bit, mom had a “Welcome Home Taffy” sign on the her back door,  So for now this is what mom needs to do and in two weeks we will have her re-evaluated on her progress and go from there.  We’re sorry to see you leave Taffy, but you are here for mom and mom is here for you.  You are both welcome back at any time.