Like a Child

Mother's behavior becomes more and more child like.  This past week she had one of her most lucid days in over a year, but the next day she threw a tantrum about taking her medicine.  I didn't get to witness the tantrum, but the evidence was all over her face.  Most of her medicine is crushed and put into a paste, but there were streaks of orange something across her forehead.   She had rubbed the same orange concoction in her hair.  I hadn't seen anything like that since the children rubbed their baby food in their hair as they were beginning to feed themselves.  In the laundry I found a shirt with pieces of have chewed pills dotting the sleeves. The aides said it had been quite a struggle to get her to take her medicine.  She had spit and fought against taking her pills.   It is difficult to understand how her mind can be so lucid talking about her favorite restaurant one day and then the next be so absolutely infantile. She eats with her fingers more and more.  Even ice cream is dipped with her finger and then sucked off.  She stuffs her mouth and cheeks with food as she eats and has to be reminded to chew and not overfill her mouth.  More and more Mother is becoming like a small child.  But in an adult this behavior is so difficult to deal with.  There is no way to teach her better.  There will be no improvement.  There will only be more decline. It is difficult to see such child like behaviors in this once elegant woman now chewing the corner of her blanket with food and medicine streaking her hair. I leave the nursing home on such days drained and bewildered.  I don't know what to do.  I think that love should cure this, but it doesn't.  Love just wipes the mess out of the hair, puts the spoon into her hand, changes the wet clothes and rocks her when she cries.