If you wanna have a good laugh (or maybe a good cry, haha), go to Youtube and check out David Lee Roth's version of "Dance The Night Away" from his recent Las Vegas show. Yikes! It's the very definition of "cringeworthy". Once again, I don't have a movie tonight, because of the situation at Pearl's. As her caregiver I'm in uncharted waters, because she's been having severe psychotic episodes for about a week now, related to a condition called "sundowning", and it's no fun to put it mildly. As a result, I haven't had the time to watch movies for the past couple of nights, but maybe tonight we can fit one in. Pearl is gonna have a doctor's evaluation next week, to see what we can do, and they do have anti-psychotic meds for dementia patients, but at any rate, if I needed to I could always get another dvd player and watch our nightly movies at Pearl's. I won't know what's gonna happen until Pearl sees the doctor, so until then we'll just wing it. So far, today hasn't been too bad. I did get her out for a nice long push around the neighborhood. They say that sunshine is helpful to treat sundowning, and we've been having some gorgeous Springlike days. So hopefully she'll be calmer tonight. Anything will be better than the past three days, which have been pure hell.
Elizabeth, I am glad to see your post on FB today. You are a good portraitist and that was a very nice thing you said about your friend Anna. It's wonderful to have such a good friend. I know you don't use FB much anymore (and you probably don't read this blog nowdays either, lol), but I hope you'll keep taking pictures and making music and drawing, etc. etc. - in addition to your professional projects - and I hope you'll continue to post once in a while. :)
Well, at the moment I'm sitting here with Pearl at her kitchen table. I've got all the lights turned on, cause they say that bright lighting also helps calm sundowning symptoms. Pearl is pretty chill at the moment. I've gotta try to get some calories into her, though, before she goes to bed. One of the biggest challenges of working with a dementia patient is getting them to concentrate on eating. A meal that would take a healthy person 10-15 minutes to finish can take up to 90 minutes for a person like Pearl, and even then you aren't guaranteed success. Right now, because of her recent episodes, we're just doing Ensure. I'm giving her sips in between typing these sentences.
Fans all over the world have been reminiscing about Neil Peart and Rush, and this morning Dennis posted a picture I haven't seen in ages. It's a photo of me and him, standing in the front row at a Rush concert in 1980, at the Forum. We're holding up a large rectangular Rush banner with the band's logo that my brother Chris painted. According to Dennis, the rest of us (me, him and Dave) also contributed a few brushstrokes, but at any rate, what's so cool about this picture is that it appeared in Billboard magazine, the April 12, 1980 edition. I don't remember how we found out about that. Perhaps Ono, who worked in a record store and had access to such mags, pointed it out to us. I used to have a copy of that issue, but long ago lost it somewhere along the line (probably after the earthquake), so it was really great to see Dennis's post and remember what a blast that concert was. Oh, yeah, and I almost forgot : our banner got confiscated that night, either by a roadie or Forum security, I can't remember. The guy acted like we weren't supposed to have it inside the venue, like we'd broken the rules, so when he took it we thought it was gone; we'd never get it back. But later on, the same guy came back and returned the banner, and it had been signed by Alex, Geddy and Neil. That was so cool. And now it's forty years later, my goodness.....
Well, now it's 7pm. Pearl is starting to act up a little bit, but it's only a 2 on a 10 scale as opposed to the last three nights, which were all 10s. I've been watching the college football championship while I type, but I'd better try to calm her down before this gets worse. I'll post this blog now and hopefully have a movie for you next time I write.
Tons of love. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
No comments:
Post a Comment