Hannah's Journey - Part 5 (Hopeful!...)

This is a journal of events that my mother has been going through since 1989 and leading to her eventual stay in a nursing home. In order to keep each part of the journal I have been keeping over the last half year brief, I will post this journal in parts, as I entered them. All the postings for this continued article can be found in the Hannah's Journey folder.

----01/17/2008 - I just thought I'd put what I hope is a kind of conclusion to this story of the changes my mother has undergone since November of 2007. It seems to be a miracle to my family!!! Maybe my mother's memory problems were aggravated by a combination of all the trauma of the hip replacement operation, pain medication in the hospital and other meds during the temporary assisted living home for 3 weeks, but during the holidays, she was with family and we eventually kept getting her off pain and some other anti-depressant meds that led to her basically coming back to nearly how she was before this all happened. We don't really know, but we are soooo thankful, that she seems to be almost herself again! She is currently still staying with my sister, as she is home all the time and we bring her to our house for weekends. We are thinking of trying to see if she can live back in her apartment by herself in the next week or so, with nursing, family members and other things to watch over her, to see if she can get back to being independent. We have kept her apartment during these few months for that purpose.

We have also found and began the process of getting into a absolutely fantastic program that is available to seniors who meet certain criteria, that is basically a day care program. It is really much more than that!!! It is a Medicaid funded program that will meet all of her needs as long as she wants. There are similar programs throughout the nation, but within Allegheny County, it is called Community Life. It takes about 3 months for approval... government red tape, but well worth it. It will give her things to do during the day, crafts, day trips, health care, they provide doctors, dentists, hearing, everything...