Yesterday (Tuesday) was my brother's 63rd birthday. My husband, daughter, and I drove out to the nursing home to take my brother out to a restaurant near the nursing home called "Gullivers". This was by design, because it is owned by the same people who own the Gullivers that was located near my brother's old home, and he used to frequent it a lot, often on his own. The staff there knew him pretty well and treated him nicely. The restaurant we went to last night wasn't as nice, the menu wasn't as big, but he seemed to like it. He also seemed to like the shirt that I bought him as a present, although I gave it to him with trepidation because the nursing heme is always losing his clothes in the laundry.
I was surprised about how chipper he was. When I had breakfast with him on Sunday, I walked in on a conversation the nurses were having about a patient who had attacked another patient, and the person turns out to be his girlfriend. She had been sequestered (isolated) behind the nurses desk when I got there. My brother told me last night that she had been shipped out to another facility by Sunday afternoon, presumably never to be seen again. He didn't seem upset at all and was very philosophical about it , reminding me that she was severely mentally ill and reminding me that she had a "psychotic episode". My brother has Aspergers Syndrome, and it has always been a bit unsettling how he deals with personal loss, it just doesn't seem to bother him that much. I don't know if that is good or not.
He has managed to lose some weight from the losing fluids by a change in his medication, but he still has a nasty cough that I plan to discuss at his care meeting on Friday. At least I don't have to inquire about how to keep him safe from his girlfriend's violent attacks on people. This whole thing is just so weird., I keep on having to remind myself that he almost died three times last year and he is doing remarkably well, considering.
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