Well...not off the carpet 100% yet.

We are still locked in a dance of toilet/walking/denial conversations.
And on-going carpet dwelling.

Okaasan IS a whole lot better than last week.
She sits upright and watches TV, she eats a little food.
She has walked herself to the toilet....twice in the past 2 days.
The rest has been...predictably a carpet and pajamas and diapers situation.
She made it to the kitchen table...once.

So, you can see - we aren't off and walking yet.

Trying to persuade/recommend/encourage her to wear the diapers - or even the sanitary towel-like pads is a struggle. She constantly claims to be on the verge of going to the toilet room herself. But usually doesn't. Her focus goes back to the TV, or if she is trying to actually move she will reach one stage of the journey from carpet to toilet - and get stuck there, for an hour or more....one knee off the carpet, sitting on the side chair....

Hard.
The moaning/screaming painfest on the carpet was easier to 'nurse' - but emotionally/physically tougher for us.
Now, because she is mentally more together, everything we try to help her with has to be discussed WITH her and reasoned thru again and again...repeating the messages in loops.

He and I did escape for a few hours yesterday afternoon and early evening - to meet friends in the beer festival downtown. Then back by 7 pm to feed Okaasan.
She was aiming to stand and get to the kitchen table all the time the food was being prepared. So she got up off the carpet. To the sofa. To the side chair.
When the food was ready and on the table - she was still 4 meters away on the side chair in her room. She examines her feet and legs as if they are a disconnected from herself and she is waiting for them to kick into action...as if somebody somewhere will throw a switch and she will be mobile...
The food was in the bowl all hot and waiting. That 4 meters gap looked undoable. She refused to use a stick or a supporting arm from a caring family member.

We gave her a small bowl of pasta at that half way station.
Then she slipped back down into the carpet nest.

And so it goes. I'm home today.
Next week - if he and I are working - we'll have to leave food for her within reach of the carpet nest.

Ah. The carpet.
I am trying to clean it up. Hard with her in situ of course.
I've got towels and newspapers down to mop up pee, I am trying to dry it out - with a hair dryer!!! And the blanket that covers the kotastsu heated table is damp too.....

Yuk. Yuk

I am doing mopping up operations in front of Okaasan - because it's a way of trying to enforce the idea that "you DON'T always get to the toilet, and it IS embarrassing, but I'm ok with it, but it WOULD be helpful if you wore the diapers or pads"...trying...trying to get that message across.

Of course she doesn't think that sitting on a pee-soaked carpet is a good thing. Every good-housewife cell in her brain tells her that. But there's a vast disconnect between knowing that and agreeing to help us with that situation.

Oh, and it's all in a second language for me.
:-))

Ho hum.

Meanwhile...just to add spice....one cat has brought home TWO still-alive catches this morning!
The bird that was in this computer room - I managed to let escape thru open windows.
The baby rat/large field mouse is still lurking somewhere in the living room.....last seen shortly after 5 am behind the CD collection.

Ahhh...the weekend. So relaxing.