The Friday before mom’s second cataract surgery, as I mentioned in my post a couple of weeks ago, was her first appointment with the geriatric psychiatrist, Dr. M. We came away from that appointment with a prescription for a medication to treat her depression, with him telling mom that any side effects were rare and, if any appeared, typically very mild, tending toward those of the gastrointestinal variety. He recommended that she take it in the morning with food to avoid any of those potential side effects. I swung by the pharmacy first thing on Saturday morning to pick up the prescription, and since by now we were back on the 3 eyedrop-a-day regimen for the second pre-surgical eye (while still administering 2 a-day for the first eye), I dropped it off when I delivered the first round of drops for the day.

There were 2 dosages of the depression medication: a lower dose to start for the first week, then a higher dose she was to take for another week and ½ before her follow up appointment with Dr. M. I put the higher dosage bottle away in the cabinet, leaving the lower dosage one on the kitchen counter where she would see it in the morning when she made her breakfast. I left all the standard literature that comes with any new prescription off to the side on the kitchen table. I came back in the early afternoon for round 2 of the daily eyedrops to find my mother somewhere well-beyond agitated, bordering on the accusatory:

“I’m not taking those new pills.”

Instantly I knew what had happened.

“I read those papers and it said there could be eye problems so I called Dr. M’s office and told him I’m not going to take them.” She didn’t want to risk messing up the surgery.

I started to remind her that Dr. M had said that the side effects were rare and mild, but thought better of trying to talk her into it at this stage given her frenzied state of mind. She continued, attempting to convey her concerns, her frustration building , unable to extract and articulate the thoughts in her head. I quickly put it all together based on the sentence fragments she was hurling at me. Her eye doctor didn’t know about this new medication because she hadn’t been on it when they last reviewed her medication list. Then she wasn’t sure *who* she’d called, causing her more frustration, so I looked at the call log on the phone. Turned out she’d called the eye surgery center. I told her they weren’t open on the weekends so they wouldn’t be getting back to her until Monday morning, but also conveyed not to worry about it – if she wasn’t comfortable taking it yet, then she shouldn’t take it. We’d wait to hear from the surgical center or the doctor on Monday to be sure it was OK, and if it was, she could just start it on Tuesday, since she had to fast Monday morning before the surgery.

Monday morning the surgical center called back and told her the medication wouldn’t interfere with her surgery. I did the drops, later than normal, just before we left for the surgery, which, this time, was scheduled for noon. All went well, and, because she now knew what to expect, though I offered to stay over again this time, she was comfortable with me spending that night in my own bed. I reminded her though, that if anything was even a little bit off, she should just call me.

I arrived the next morning around 9:15 to help her remove her patch and dressings and to be sure she ate something and took her first dose of her new medication. Her appointment was at 10:15, so we were planning to leave a little after 9:30, so I was surprised to find the place eerily quiet. I called out. No answer. I wondered if she’d overslept.

I went to their room to find her sitting in the chair next to her dresser, in quiet tears. She seemed shaky and weak. Panic rose. She said she was feeling dizzy and strange and that she didn’t think she’d be able to go to the appointment. I felt her head for fever as I ran through the list of post-op complication warning signs I’d since memorized: bleeding through the dressings (no); fever (no – though she was a little sweaty); chills (she said no); nausea (no); vomiting (no); pain at the surgical site (it felt like the other eye had, so no). I asked her if she’d eaten anything (no), so I went out to the kitchen, peeled her a clementine, poured a fresh glass of cold water, and brought them in to her.

It was imperative that we see the doctor that day for the post-op follow up, but I told her not to worry – that I would call to change the time to later. While she ate the clementine, I called the doctor and left word on his assistant’s voicemail with what was happening and asking if we could bump the appointment to later.

After a few minutes, mom seemed marginally better. I made her some toast. Hannah had arrived so she helped her finish getting dressed. They came out to the kitchen and I went back to get my phone off her dresser, distracted for a minute by a reminder that had popped up on my screen. I came back into the kitchen to butter the toast. By now she was sitting in her spot at the table, so I washed my hands in preparation for removing her patch and dressings and doling out another dose of eyedrops. The eye looked red, as the other one had the morning after surgery, but nothing alarming. I decided to wait on the eyedrops until after she’d finished her toast.

As I went back over toward the sink to grab a napkin for her, I saw the bottle with the new medication on the counter, so took one out and brought it over to her to take now that she was eating something a little more solid. As I laid it on the table next to her plate, she said, “Oh, I took that already.” (What?!?)

“You did? When? Like before I got here this morning, or just in the past few minutes?” (Could she have taken it in the time it took me to get my phone?)

She thought for a moment. “Before you got here. I was up early and walking around and I saw it so I took it.”

“Did you eat anything when you took it?”

“No.”

“I think that’s why you were feeling so dizzy and strange! Dr. M said you should take these with food or they might make you feel funny. How are you feeling now that you have some food in you?”

“Better.”

My phone rang. It was the doctor’s assistant. I explained what I thought had happened and that I thought we may still be able to make it but we might be a few minutes late. She said not to worry and did some re-arranging of the schedule, working us in after 1:00 that afternoon instead. Perfect.

Mom finished her toast, now on the upswing. I plopped in another set of eyedrops and headed home for a couple of hours before I’d be back for the post-op appointment, which went not unlike the one for the left eye. Another week of 3 drops, 3 times a day in the right eye until we were back for the second follow up appointment. We could stop the drops for the left eye, which felt like a small victory.

At the second follow up, the doctor noticed some swelling in the left (first) eye, so my small victory evaporated as the regimen was shifted again: 2 drops, twice a day, in *each* eye until the final follow up appointment at the end of April. As I’m typing this, we’re counting down the last few days before what should be the final follow-up appointment, the much-anticipated measurements for her final eyeglasses prescription, and The End of the Eyedrop Episodes. There’s a part of me that will rejoice, and another part of me that’s already working on a reason to go over there every day anyway. Maybe just not twice a day. . .

If you’re of a certain age, perhaps the title of this week’s blog puts a certain song from “The Sound of Music” in your head. Sorry if that now becomes your earworm du-jour.

Going back a few weeks, I shared how mom’s post-surgical home-care occupational therapist performed a cognitive screen with her and her scores indicated fairly significant dementia. I wasn’t there when the O.T. (I’ll call her Nina) did the screen, but knowing how my mom had been struggling emotionally with all the challenges aging suddenly seemed to be throwing her way, I worried that she’d internalize this, adding it to her growing list of worries, fears, and perceived shortcomings. (Among them: her need for a pacemaker; a recent visit to the eye doctor that resulted in her being scheduled for upcoming cataract surgery on each eye, along with 3 separate follow-up appointments for each surgery; her ongoing bouts of word-loss – being able to picture something but not give it voice). No amount of reassurance or logic seemed to change the self-critical frame into which she painted these facts.

I asked Nina how mom had reacted. She told me she (mom) knew she “hadn’t done well,” but Nina reassured her that there was no “well or not-well,” and that it had nothing to do with her intelligence. I knew my mom. I knew she’d hear the words; but I also knew they’d likely bounce uselessly off her looming sense of diminishment. I pressed, “how did she feel about *that?*”

“Well, she wasn’t too happy, but I talked to her about it and by the time I left she seemed better.”

Nina suggested that I get mom in to see the geriatric psychiatrist my dad had been seeing (“Dr. M”). I promised I would, and wondered out loud how on earth I was going to bring this up with her. Nina reassured me that I shouldn’t feel like I had to do that right away, and that when I did, I didn’t have to make a big deal about it. The reality was that it was important that we get it checked out because we might be able to do something to improve it. My dad did seem to be doing fairly well on the medication he’d been taking, but mom’s “presentation” was so different that I was skeptical the same thing could work for her.

I called Dr. M’s office to see if I could schedule an appointment around the same time my dad was slated to go back for another follow up in late March (it was early February). Though the practice wasn’t taking new patients, they were accommodating considering that dad was already a patient, and even maneuvered things to schedule mom’s appointment in the time slot immediately prior to dad’s. They asked if we’d had any MRIs or CT scans and I shared with them her fainting episodes prior to her pacemaker implantation, and that 2 CT scans were done prior to her surgery. They said they’d arrange to get the images from her doctor. I was happy for all of it, but inside I was still fretting about how to tell her.

I called my sister and filled her in. She had no difficulty relating to my concern about bringing it up, so we agreed that I’d bide my time and wait for the right moment to “go there.” Several days later, I decided to write the appointment onto their two calendars, in plain sight, as a possible catalyst. It was scheduled for a Friday afternoon – as it happened, the Friday before the Monday she was scheduled for her second cataract surgery, so I figured she’d be checking the calendar as the date of the cataract surgery approached. I wanted to let it come up in the natural flow of things. Eventually, it did, two days beforehand.

Mom: “Hey, how come I have an appointment on Friday with Dr. M, too?”

Me: “Remember your occupational therapist Nina? And that test she gave you?”

“No. . . not really.”

“That’s OK. Anyway, she shared the results of that test with Dr. K, and Dr. K recommended that we get you in to see Dr. M, too. You might not remember because of everything else that was going on, but in one of our follow up appointments with Dr. K, she recommended that we have you see Dr. M.”

“Oh. Okay.”

When I headed home a little while later, I wondered if that was it – all that worrying over nothing. The next day (the day before the appointment), she revisited it: “I remembered that test Nina gave me. So what’s going to happen on Friday?” Her voice was slipping back and forth over the fine lines between curiosity, fear, and irritation.

“Well, you know how you’ve been getting frustrated over losing words sometimes? Seeing Dr. M will help us start to figure out what’s going on with that. You’ve noticed how daddy’s been doing pretty well on his medication from Dr. M, right? They may be able to do something that will help you, too, but they need to see you in order to do that.”

Once again I was relieved that she seemed to accept this explanation with little angst.

When I arrived Friday prior to the appointment, however, the angst level had clearly ticked upwards, evidenced with mom’s defiant announcement: “I don’t know what they’re going to ask me today but I may not be very nice about it. They might just kick me out.”

“I don’t think they’ll do that mom. Remember, this is exactly their specialty. They’re here to help figure out what’s going on, and to come up with things that might make it better.”

As we pulled into the parking lot of Dr. M’s office, she declared, “I just want you to know I’m not very happy about this.”

“I know you aren’t, but we trust Dr. K, and she wanted to make sure we did this.” It was helpful to fall back on Dr. K, for whom mom had developed great affection – she recognized that Dr. K’s actions the day of the pacemaker implant had probably saved her life.

The first 30 – 40 minutes of the appointment were tough. Karen, the therapist, administered another SLUMS test. In many of the areas, mom did fine, but it was hard to watch her struggle with others – not for the fact of any cognitive deficit on its face, but for how hard it was for her to wrestle with the emotions that came up when she had a tough time with something. Karen was patient and careful, reminding mom that there really were no right or wrong answers. When mom would struggle she’d sometimes prompt gently, following, I’m sure, administration protocol for the test, as eventually, it seems that scoring weighs out the differences in how questions are answered (straight away; with prompting; or not at all). She also went through a series of depression-related questions. We talked about mom’s hearing, which had also been problematic.

Ultimately, Karen walked us gently back through the results of the SLUMS test and depression screen. She shared that there were some areas where mom’s scores indicated normal cognitive function, and others where there were challenges. She also highlighted that mom’s score on the depression screen fell just below the threshold for clinical depression. She assured mom that this was not at all unusual, and that depression could be a significant factor in cognitive functioning. Very often, she noted, treating the depression made a big overall impact.

We talked. I reinforced how glad I was that we were there and how it hurt me to see mom beating herself up when she couldn’t remember things or when words wouldn’t come out. I confessed that it seemed to me that she felt it meant that she was somehow “less than,” or not smart, and how untrue that was. We cried. We hugged. The whole mood shifted – so much lighter. Karen reiterated the importance (as she’d done in the past with dad) of physical exercise and doing new things to stretch the brain. We made a list of things we might be able to do: playing set-back and re-learning cribbage. Making bird houses. Getting some new CDs to listen to. Dr. M came in and, as he reviewed the scores (and likely Karen’s notes), he echoed Karen, stating that he’d like to take a shot at treating the depression first, to see how that might go. Mom was on board.

Dad arrived for his appointment right on time thanks to Hannah, their caregiver. I brought him in to mom’s appointment, as had been the plan, and we brought him up to speed with the findings and the plan for her. Dad was his characteristic, agreeable, low-key self. We rolled from mom’s appointment into his, which was a basic check-in. It went smoothly. We made follow up appointments for both of them.

While Hannah took dad home, I took mom, stopping on the way home for some groceries. She told me, more than once, how much better she felt, and how good it was to get all of those feelings out. I told her how glad I was, and how optimistic I felt that we were on a more positive path.

I walked away enlightened about depression and its link to dementia. Everyone’s is probably slightly (or a lot) different, and determining other areas of potential impact (such as depression) is important to coming up with a plan to manage it with the most appropriate approach. Now to get them to exercise, and to their proverbial, Sound of Music Switzerland. . .