Claudia's hair

I went to the hospital to see Claudia last night after we dropped Sean and the girls off at the Richardson's. I hadn't seen her in over a week. When I walked in I was horrified. She looked terrible. Her head looked like a dog with mange. It might not have been so shocking if Claudia wasn't so obsessed with looking good. She always has her hair done and her make up on. They did a 12 hour EKG on her 10 days ago. They put the equivalent of superglue in her hair to hold the 20+ electrodes on her head. No one had tried to get the glue out. Claudia was too confused to know how bad she looked but it really bothered me that people were seeing her look so bad. The glue was solid and there were spots where they'd pulled part of her scalp off with the electrodes.

 She also didn't recognize me when I walked in the room. She just looked at me with that blank Alzheimer's look. When I spoke she recognized my voice and said "Carol." I said "Holy crap Claudia you look like hell." (I'm just nice like that.) When I was talking to her she kept looking to her right at the ceiling I asked her what she was looking at and she said "those things." I don't know if she was hallucinating or having focal seizures. When I left I texted Lynda and told her she HAD to do something with her sisters hair. I told her I'd look on the Internet and see what to do and call her. When I talked to her she said she's been bothered by her hair but was scared to do anything about it. I told her to remember what Yoda said about fear. (But I couldn't quite remember what he said.) I think fear is the path to the dark side but that doesn't really fit the situation. I told her I wasn't scared so we were going to get this crap out of her hair. Lynda said Claudia was doing the ceiling gaze with her too and she was worried she was seeing Garret and Kathy and they were trying to take her.

Claudia had not had a bed bath or a shower in the two weeks she's been in the hospital. It was quite awful. Lynda and I met up with a plethora of remedies we found on the Internet. I asked the aide for a bed shampoo tray and she said "I don't think we have those." I said, "oh I think you do. This is a big hospital. If you don't have one on this floor I bet they have one in the ICU, go look." About 15 minutes later she came back and asked "is this what you want?" Why yes, yes it is. Good work my little C.N.A. friend. I had the nurse give her pain medications before we started. She asked Claudia if she wanted one or two. I said "2 Claudia you're going to want 2!" She was pretty comfortable while we deglued her scalp and hair.

The knots were crazy and she had dreadlocks in the back. We tried conditioner and shampoo. The glue was not water soluble. We used some stuff Lynda got from her niece that is supposed to remove hair extension glue and that didn't work. We shampooed and conditioned it a couple of times, soaked it in olive oil and then started combing that crap out. The longer it soaked in olive oil the easier it got. I used Sean's lice comb to comb out the glue and it slid off her hair. Like picking nits I found it oddly therapeutic. Perhaps when I start my nit picking business I can add EEG glue removal.

Claudia's son Brett went down to the gift shop and got some bobby pins so we could pin up the parts we had gotten free of knots and glue. It took the two of us two and a half hours but I have to say we did a great job. We got her up to the shower and washed her hair again and combed it all out with the conditioner still in. It hung down her back so straight and clean I could have cried. I put it in a braid so it won't tangle up in the back but I think we kicked that glues butt. Claudia said the shower felt so good. She was exhausted when we were finished. 

Such a beautiful sight. I didn't take pictures of her face when her hair was so bad it just seemed wrong!

Here she is feeling clean and like Claudia. She looks about 80 years old but she looks a sight lot better than when we started. I bet she's lost 20 pounds. They still haven't given her a diagnosis. I'm worried she's got a prion disease. I guess time will tell. Last night I was sure she'd never recover but today I felt better. She seems to do much better in the morning and it was after 6 when I saw her yesterday. Today she even asked me how many students we have registered for Monday's class.