Good morning, everyone,

It's been a long time since I've been able to post in the AM. We actually had a semi-normal day yesterday. I say "semi" because Mom is now in "sick mode," a phenomenom I didn't know about when I first wrote the book.

This varies from person to person. In our case, if Mom is sick for more than a few days or stays in the hospital even briefly, she goes into sick mode. She moans, does nothing to assist in her daily activities, and has a grimace on her face like she sucked a lemon.

This time, she worked herself up so much, she clenched her teeth until she couldn't open her mouth without extreme pain.

The most important thing to remember is to snap your parent out of sick mode asap. If it persists, the way back to "normal" takes longer.

In our case, determining sick mode is easy. When Mom moans, I ask her if she's in pain. If she says no and I then ask her why she's moaning. Her answer is always the same: I don't know. Then I tell her, instead of moaning, say "ha, ha' ha" which she does. I also work on the grimace and make her smile, even weakly. I know this sounds ridiculous, but it works. (If any of you remember Norman Cousins' story, that was my inspiration.)

For Mom, I acknowledge her discomfort, but tell her if she was still sick, she'd be in the hosptial. I also tell her to look at my face and ask her if I look worried. When she says no, I tell her that she's recovering and she she shouldn't worry.

I think one of the reasons we wound up back in the emergency room was our doctor said maybe you should take her back to the hospital. She heard that and she immediately started to deteriorate. This is also why I do everything I can to keep her home!

I've got this down to a science, so after a little trouble starting the day, we wound up better. This morning, she's even better.

I "googled" information about TMJ and treated it that way. Warm compresses on the neck and sides of her face along with gentle massage of the area. Her right side is back to normal; now I'm working on the left side.

One more note. To get nutrition into her since she can't chew, I tried Boost, but it has a milk base--she has a problem with some dairy--so I switched to Ensure which she's tolerating better.

Until later . . .