Good Morning Thursday, April 9, 2015

Good Morning Everyone,

I haven’t posted in a while, not sure why that is, but thought I would write about a few things that have been happening and will be happening.

The other day at work we had a guest speaker who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.  His name is Dr. Richard Taylor.  Watch him here: Richard Taylor Alzheimer’s from the inside out – YouTube.  This has really had an impact on me ever since Monday when he spoke to us at 2PM.  He is pretty amazing. I hope the link will work, but if not, just Google Dr. Richard Taylor Alzheimers and a bunch of stuff comes up.   I was “running” his powerpoint for him, but we never really got through it.  He just spoke for an hour about his experience with the disease.  We were worried that no one would show up for his talk so a bunch of phone calls were made to department heads and comments came back like – oh is that today?  So as our anxiety heightened throughout the day, it was all for naught.  Every seat was taken, even standing room only and every department was represented.  Our COO, Kent got there and even had to sit in the back of the room!  As Richard spoke, everyone was totally engaged.  I’m still amazed by it and it gives me more skill in working with dementia residents each day.  It also shows me how lucky I am to be experiencing this in my work place.

Dr. Richard Taylor

We had him stay in Mr. Burdick’s room while he was here.  He said he wanted to do that even though Moorings Park has “hotel/guest” rooms available for that type of thing.  I’m not sure I’d want to sleep on a “hospital” bed, but that’s just me.  Anyway his first night was not so great as the AC was making noise all night.  He came in on a Sunday and there is a “skeleton” crew on and I doubt he had a chance to notice the problem until he had a “sleepless” night.  So on Monday I sent a work order to have it fixed and found out that our facilities people were able to fix the problem.  Then he went out to lunch on Tuesday with a group from the Alzheimer’s Network and came back exhausted and his blood pressure was really low.  Come to find out he had been prescribed some BP medicine but he was afraid to start it and then travel, so he didn’t take it.  So we drove him to the airport where he waited a couple of hours for his flight.  So on Wednesday, I asked Lily if she heard back from him.  Finally mid morning she got an email from him saying he got home to Houston fine, sleeping most of the way.  So life goes on.  Just one more life experience to tuck away!

Today we are having a “car wash” for our Relay For Life fundraising efforts.  Only $5 will get our cars washed.  Rose will get a bath:

Getting a bath at work

Getting a bath at work 2

Tomorrow we’ll be able to wear jeans to work for $5 so that will be great as I’m leaving work to drive to Boca for the weekend Quarterly.  More on that later.  Time is up for today.  Thanks for visiting!