One

 This blog is about my mom who was just diagnosed with vascular dementia.

I am very close to my mom. She has been a big part of our family. She lives minutes from my home. Over the years she has babysat my kids numerous times. She has played beer pong with them (when they got older of course). They love Grandma Baer and she loves them.  Our dog Cosmo loves"grandma" because of all the special attention she gives him meaning treats. 

In July of 2021 something happened that started a spiral decline in my mom's mental health. She was out with her girl friends for lunch. It was her friends 85th birthday. She called me the next day because she felt unwell. I went over her symptoms. She just had body aches, no fever, no cough...nothing else just body aches. She said she was going to lay low. I encouraged her to take some Tylenol. She didn't want visitors incase it was Covid. So I called her daily to check in on her and she recovered.

But then something changed. Within a week she became unsure of herself. She couldn't recall telephone conversations. She got confused more easily. She stopped playing solitaire. The big one was she stopped reading. She loved to read especially the Bosch series. I also noticed she was losing weight. 

I called the doctor for an appointment. She had just been there in early July and she checked out fine.

By the time we got to the doctor in early September she had lost 2 pounds. At 4'10'' and 89 pounds that was not good. Her weight had steadily declined from 100 pounds within a year. Her excuse was she didn't have much of an appetite. 

Tests were ordered: urine, MRI and MRA. How I prayed for a bladder infection or something like it because this can cause memory issues in elderly women and it would be an easy fix. Sadly, that came back negative. Now I began to realize we having something bigger ahead of us.