Quote of the Moment

"It's never wrong to hope, Byx," said my mother. "Unless the truth says otherwise."
- from Endling #1: The Last, by Katherine Applegate

Tuesday, April 05, 2011

April, Already?

Time flies when reality's in limbo...

The days have been getting away from me for the better part of a month. Aside from writing, I've managed to drop the ball on most everything I've meant to do. Sketchbook consumption is down to a crawl. Craft projects are just not happening. I'm even having trouble just sitting down to read books, which means my April update at Brightdreamer Books is going to be so anemic it probably won't happen. Don't even ask how I've been doing on the exercise front, though I can blame the unusually wet and scuzzy weather for that one. (Well, I probably shouldn't, but I choose to anyways.)

On the other hand, over at Grandpa's house, things are moving along pretty well. Rooms are being painted, fixtures are being updated... all sorts of little things that need doing after a few decades of use are finally getting dealt with. So, whatever happens, at least the place will look decent when we're done.

Grandpa himself is not progressing as well as one might hope. Some days he'll feed himself and notice surroundings and be able to talk for an hour or so. Others he just isn't there. At this point, we're suspecting that it could be sleep related. Evidently, older people sometimes have trouble getting enough deep sleep (REM stages 3 and 4.) In other words, just because he's sleeping most of the day doesn't mean he's really sleeping deeply enough to rest. If this is true in Grandpa, that could be the invisible key to his inexplicable shifts from reasonably coherent to nearly comatose, since nothing else changes in his routine from day to day. I don't know if there's anything that can be done to ensure proper sleep, or at least improve the odds, or even if this is what's really going on to baffle family and staff alike, but I'd feel better if we can put our fingers on a cause.

Maybe then April won't be the lost cause that March seems to have been.

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