Jo is much better today, recovering from the effects of the bloody Baclofen. Looking on the bright side, she has had a "holiday" of a week in a drug-addled haze from her ordeal. The downside is that the memory of the transfer is becoming hazy, something I am fighting to keep alive by reminding her of it. Interestingly, during one such reminder session, she said she felt pain in the leg whilst standing on it, although she did seem confused as to whether she had felt pain in the right or left leg. Her brain may have transferred the pain to her right.
Jo seems to be recovering from the reappearance of neglect. She does seem to be looking to her left more spontaneously and is holding her head centred instead of twisted to the right as she was. She was also able to see the branches to the left on the tree we looked at two days ago.
She read quite a long story in the paper, with some effort of concentration, but then gave up on reading the horoscopes, saying they were blurry, possibly due to fatigue. She failed to notice her grey flannel bag on her left but spotted it as soon as I told her it was there and said she would have found it if she had looked harder.
The left leg is still leaning right, with some force, which one can only hope is muscle power with some element of left side neglect making it “push” to the right. I shall be observing this over the weekend to see how it recovers.
Jo's pride in her appearance seems to have been reawakened. She was wearing her cream shawl cardigan and asked for the black one and a particular blouse, which I cannot find.
Apparently they tried to give Jo Baclofen today! Thank goodness she refused it. She also hid one in her bed earlier, either Thursday night or Friday morning.
The bloody stuff seems to be making her lean to the left and is also reducing her ability to shuffle her buttocks. In the chair she was unable to shift from right to left buttock and when she tried to shuffle from chair to bed using the sliding board it took a lot of effort and she was hardly able to lift her buttocks at all. That bloody drug and that damned OT.
They put Jo back on the flit flow today. Apparently "having a chat" with her about it as though it were her intransigence and not their mistake in administering that bloody Baclofen that had scuppered the previous attempt. They did not explain or demonstrate how to operate the tap, leaving her dependent on them to avoid accidents. Jo showed me where the tap was and then I worked out how to operate it and showed her. When I phoned her at 23:00 she was using it to have a pee. They need her to drink more water and Jo complained for the first time about tap water, normally a pet peeve of hers, but one she hasn't bothered about until now, another sign of her return to herself. I promised to bring her some bottled water in the morning.
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