Mark Update

I spoke with Mark's physical therapist earlier this week and got some updates on his condition. I'm tired of being wordy (it has been a LONG week of sickness and insanity at our house - either Kinsley is on the cusp of something right now too, or she has super immunity, because all of the rest of us have been down and out), so I'm going to use bullet points:

• He encouraged me to begin looking into finding a tub transfer chair for Mark. He said they would be doing a shower evaluation in the near future, as I've begun to have concerns that he's not getting himself clean appropriately. (His showers tend to last about 45 seconds these days). He doesn't really stink, per se, but he also doesn't smell like the shower gel, which usually makes him smell really good, so I'm not sure what's going on with that.
• He also encouraged me to pre-emptively begin looking into finding a 22" heavy-duty wheelchair for Mark for the future. This isn't necessarily imminent, but just something to begin looking into. If anyone has any leads on one for relatively cheap, or if you happen to find one at a garage sale or thrift store, let me know. It would need to have a 350lb capacity at minimum.
• Mark's MoCA score is now down to 11/12, which is down from 16/17 last year. This puts him in the low side of the moderate category, just on the cusp of severe. (If you aren't sure what a MoCA score is, here is a helpful description from Wikipedia)
• He is now urinary incontinent most of the time. He's not handling that well at all, which is certainly expected. You really never know what you're going to find when you enter his room at this point, so I'm really needing to consider not bringing the kids around as much. He has no qualms about stripping down right in front of them.
• He still has the tardive dyskenesia from Risperidol, which is sad. It makes him shake and say "yeah" about 10 times in a row when he gets excited.
• He seems a lot more spacey and distant during our visits.
• He's extremely overwhelmed and extremely agitated with the kids and usually asks for them to leave when they come. That's a really hard one to see, but I understand. They like to crawl up on his lap and try to play wrestle with him, and he doesn't tolerate it well.
  
• When I come, he stares at me a lot and says over and over, "I'm glad you came. I'm glad you came. I'm glad you came."
• He is still on a soft foods diet. We were concerned he may need to move to purees, but a Speech therapy evaluation said soft foods were fine. He likes to eat pancakes a lot for meals.
• He continues to require 1:1 care.
• He naps on and off a lot during the day. He seems obsessed with his CPAP machine and wears it whenever he does nap. MANY of my solo visits, he just lays there with his CPAP machine on, so I crawl in bed next to him and just lay there.
  
• He likes to lay on his loveseat like this a lot during the day. I figured out a few weeks ago that it's because he really likes to stare at the pictures on this photo room divider.