Moving Day!

So it's a done deal. It was a long, emotional day for everyone - Blanche, Tracy and me. Even our friend Wendy, who helped me with the movers and packing Blanche's stuff wanted to "get out of Dodge" before Tracy and Blanche arrived at Kensington Green. Tracy had decided to tell her mother mostly the truth - that Blanche's doctor had decided it was better for her to "stay" at Kensington Green because she kept saying she didn't feel safe and felt isolated in her apartment. We never actually said the word "live". We kept telling Blanche she was going to "stay" there.

It went well for awhile. Blanche was confused about where she was and why she was going to stay there. She was happy that Cleo, her cat, was there, already sleeping peacefully in the closet. The three of us had lunch in the main dining room. It was okay, but the portions aren't nearly as large as what Blanche is used to eating.

We are hoping the cat doesn't become an issue. Tracy and I ran home to get some things I had forgotten and when we returned Blanche had put hand cream in one side of the cat's food bowl and had placed a pile of Calcium pills on the cat's place mat! Yikes! We didn't see that coming! So we took the Calcium pills home with us and threw away the hand cream, hoping that would help. We also told Blanche that she needed to just feed the cat plain old cat food or we would have to take Cleo away. That's the first time she starting crying a little.

When Tracy asked her why she was crying, she said "I just want us all to be together". Okay, that made me a little weepy too, but I quickly reined that in. The only real glitch came when one of the nurses came up to us and asked us to contact Cleo's vet and have copies of her rabies and distemper papers sent to them ASAP. Okay, except that Cleo is 16 and she doesn't go to the vet's because she is an inside, only pet. That didn't matter, so we had to make an emergency appointment with our vet and have him give Cleo the shots.

When we were leaving to take Cleo to the vet, Blanche was playing bingo. That was nice to see. We kind of snuck out before she saw us. When we returned, they were just taking her to dinner and as soon as she saw us, she turned to leave the nurse and kind of said, never mind, I'm all set now. We convinced her to continue on to dinner and we would see her later. Then we left, both of us a little weepy and completely drained. Our day had started at 6 a.m. and it was about 5:30 - very long for this type of thing.

We're going to see her today, but just for a little while. We don't want to eat with her again because we want her to get used to eating in the memory care dining room, which is different from the main dining room.

Even though Blanche is gone, I'll try to keep writing this blog because I think there will be much more to share as Blanche gets used to "staying" at Kensington Green.

Bye for now...