I know I said I'd take and post some pics from mom's birthday party, but it turned into a quiet family conflict with my brother instead (mom was not aware), so I wasn't in the mood.

That was resolved eventually, though.  She did have a good birthday and seemed pretty happy. 
The physical continues to deteriorate - she had a pleural effusion on a chest x-ray that almost looked like pneumonia, so she was on an antibiotic for that.  Her leg is stable.  She is now totally incontinent of urine and is having a very hard time "starting" to walk after she gets up from a chair.  She usually has to be cued to lift her foot by touching her leg and a lot of the time it takes us a few minutes for her to get started.

I'm going to have to check on something though - on Saturday I wasn't sure whether she was down to her last few disposable briefs or not and I didn't have time to get to Sam's Club, so I brought in a pack of 14 from the drug store.  Her aide was all happy because they had just run out and mom had one of the blue diapers with tapes on and the aide said that those are too small for her.

I'm puzzled because my mom is not the only large person there and Medicaid pays for the blue diapers (they won't pay for the briefs, which my  mother prefers), so right there I'm saving Medicaid money by providing hers.  But they don't have ANY extra large?  I guess they'll have to get some then.  I hate when they put the too-small ones on her because she feels like they're falling off (and they are - they're taped way below where they need to be) and she walks around holding her pants and the diaper up.  I'm going by there first thing tomorrow to drop off 2 cases of briefs and clarify the diaper situation.

Emotionally, my mom is all over the place - she is talking a lot about how she never had a mother (her mother died when she was 7) or she will talk about her mom being in "God's place" and she wants to see her.  This was the situation Saturday evening.  She was lying in bed and I will usually hug her from behind and talk and she likes that a lot.  On nights like that, I tend to burst into tears when I get into the car after the visit.  It's all just so sad and truly if I had to get dementia in order for her to be okay, I would do it in a second.