More about Mawmaw

I'll try to keep this as short as possible, but it's hard with everyone not knowing the back story.

About 5 days ago she comes to me telling me her leg is just 'thobbing' (what she calls throbbing) and she has no idea why.  I make her let me look and, hey, you've scraped the skin off a patch and it's infected.  When did you do that?  Oh, about a week ago.  *Sigh*  Treated it at home for two days (over the weekend) and then took her in.  Her dr. wasn't available, so had them get her in with mine.  LOVE that man.  Prescribed her some stuff to help heal wounds on diabetics and called me out in the hall to find out what the other dr. had been doing about her obvious dementia issues.  NOTHING.  I've been asking, begging and doing everything I can to get them to test/document, etc.

So, my dr. is now her dr.  We've been back for a few more appts. and have more to go, but at least I feel like we're making progress.  Yay!

He gave her a short test involving some memorization, answering some questions, drawing some shapes that overlapped, etc.  Will get the results from that next time.  He also did quite a bit of blood work.  Most of it came back fine, sugar (A1C) was fine, so was iron, B12, liver function and a bunch of other stuff.  Cholesterol was a bit high but nothing he's worried about at this time, especially because she hadn't fasted for that blood draw because we didn't know they were going to draw blood that day.

What he did find was that her Vitamin D is practically non-existent.  Bad news in that you need it, but good news in that it might explain a bit of the memory, mixing stuff up, getting confused stuff.  I had given the nurse a short letter to give him before he came in the room giving him details on some of the stuff she does, the stealing stuff, what I call organized hoarding, telling lies about how she's treated, trying to sneak out of the house by asking neighbors to take her six miles to town and drop her off (no, she couldn't direct anyone back to our house, has no cell phone and has no idea what our number or address is), etc.  Explained that she, I think, made up her medical history to a certain point, etc.  I KNOW she lies to doctors about stuff because I bust her on it at darn near every appt.  She won't come out of her room unless you practically drag her out (unless you promise to take her to her precious Walmart, then she'll beat you to the car! lol).  Wants books to read but refuses to go into the library and pick some out, etc.

He's putting her on a prescription Vitamin D med. to work on that.  I told her, see, there's another reason you need to get out of your room and come outside with us, so you can get more Vitamin D. She then tells him how this just doesn't make any sense because "I'm an outside person, doctor.  I LOVE BEING OUTSIDE!"

Lying.   Through.   Her.   Teeth.

Yes, I busted her.  She got all mad, made annoyed noises and then made up an excuse for herself.

It's too cold here.

Always.

Yes, you read that right, it's too cold in this state for her to go outside.
Ever.
Summer of over 100 degrees......too cold.



Right.  That's the issue.




Will tell you more next time.