Every Day is Different for Mother

When I went to the rahab center to see Mother yesterday, the nurse practitioner (Angie) saw me in the hallway. She said Mother stopped talking the day before and had been silent all day. All her vitals are excellent, her bladder infection is cleared up, and her oxygen is 100%. Angie had observed that she appeared to be gritting her teeth and clinching her lips together. It almost seemed like she was mad at someone. No matter how gently the different ones coaxed, she wouldn't speak.

I got Mother's clean laundry all hung, then tried to wake her up. She seemed almost frozen in one position as she were holding herself still. I kept coaxing and urging her to talk. It was hard coming up with open-ended questions. When she would speak I had to put my ear almost by her mouth to hear.

What I put together is that she thinks that some girls (not the nurses) are going to shoot her. Maybe she's keeping silent and still thinking they won't see her? She said that when her therapist came, she thought he had switched over to their side - I reassured her that he is on her side and all the nurses are too. She said they got her ready for death and after much probing she said they bathed her and put black clothes on her (she had on purple clothes).

One sweet note - all of a sudden she started talking with animation and smiles about a black man and there was a party at the barn. I asked and she meant the barn in Dobson, her hometown in North Carolina. She told the man she was staying overnight and wondered if he would like to stay. She was sleeping downstairs and he could choose any room upstairs that he wanted. He was sooo happy and said he'd admired that house all his life and it was his dream to sleep in it. When I asked who the man was a couple of times - she motioned with her eyes at her sleeping roommate, who is black and does look somewhat masculine.

I'm wondering if we're seeing some dementia here or a reaction to her overpowering nightmares and dreams that seem to repeat themselves.