Good Eye/Communication Day

Well, we actually had a good eye day with Peggy today. Marvel came in at 2pm and Peggy's eyes were looking pretty clear. She spent about 20-30 minutes spelling out a sentence to us, expressing that she wanted to be able to see all of us in the room better, so we angled her bed a bit. Marvel and I were getting pretty good yes and no responses, so I took the opportunity to have a good talk with Peggy about where things are at.

I expressed to Peggy our concern about the communication difficulties and our need to know where she is at emotionally and physically. For the most part, I phrased everything in yes and no questions and I was sure to ask the questions repeatedly and in different ways to test for consistency in her responses. The most important question I asked her was if she is satisfied with her current quality of life and Peggy answered yes several times to this question.

Here is a list of the yes/no questions that I asked Peggy and her responses. I will write out the questions so that you can see how we phrase things in yes/no for her. We logged all of these on the new communication log which is turning out to be a great tool to track Peggy's words and communication patterns:

Are you satisfied at your current quality of life? Yes.
At this level of communication, are you content? Yes.
Do you feel like you are communicating effectively? Yes.
Do you feel that your "hallucinations" are affecting your ability to communicate? Yes.
Are you afraid? No.
Is your mood "good" on most days? Yes.
Are you in physical pain? Yes.
Is the pain manageable? Yes.
Is the pain mostly in the trach/body aches? Yes.
Should we use more lidocaine throughout the day (for trach pain)? Yes.
Would you like to increase oxydose? Unclear response.
Do you want us to continue to ask how much oxydose you want? Yes.

All of this communication took a lot of double and triple questioning. There was a lot of confirming and reconfirming. I feel confident that for the duration of our conversation she was lucid and communicating effectively. She seemed more present today as we talked than she has for weeks. This is the most communicating that I have done with her in months.

I feel very relieved that we were able to talk about all of this. I feel good knowing where she is at today and knowing that she is not suffering. It was the first time in a long time that I have felt like we were having a "real" conversation.

Peggy was grateful that I talked with her. After we talked she thanked me. As I told Peggy, I will continue have these conversations with her on "good" eye days.