09:33 – Barbara’s mom is being discharged from the hospital today. She and Frances are going to get her back to the apartment at Creekside, but Sankie really isn’t ready to be on her own yet. Frances will stay with Sankie overnight tonight, and not leave tomorrow morning until the person they’ve hired to sit with Sankie during the day arrives. Barbara will head over there after work to relieve that person and stay with her mom Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, until someone arrives to relieve her. Then Frances will take Wednesday night, and so on, until Barbara and Frances are satisfied that Sankie will be okay on her own. It’s a question of physical rather than mental issues. Sankie is doing fine mentally, and wants to be back at home in the apartment, but she’s still extremely weak and terrified of falling. Barbara and Frances are taking her by the medical supply place on the way home to get her a walker, which should help a lot. I also encouraged Barbara to look into lift chairs while they were there. A lift chair is an immense help to someone in Sankie’s condition.
Meanwhile, with Barbara and Frances both fully occupied taking care of their mom, I’ll be visiting their dad in the Brian Center nursing home. Barbara visited him yesterday and said that he pretty much completely ignored her. He wouldn’t speak to her. This is nothing new. Dutch for the last couple of weeks has been very short with Barbara and Frances. I suspect he blames them for being in the hospital and then the nursing home, rather than back at the apartment where he really wants to be. Unfortunately, I think that’s very unlikely to happen. It’ll surprise me if Dutch ever recovers enough to move downstairs to the assisted-living floor at Brian Center, let alone moving back to the apartment. And Sankie really doesn’t want Dutch at the apartment. She can’t take care of him and she knows that, and she’s terrified that he’ll drop dead before her eyes.
Science kits continue to sell well. We’ve already shipped three today, and sales for this month are on track to be three to four times sales in May 2012. Until now, we’ve been building kits in batches of 30, but I think we’ll ramp that up to batches of 60.