Remarkably, Colin has 'celebrated' his 65th birthday today, with a little help from his friends! A different sort of birthday to the ones he's been used to - no going out for the day or for a nice meal. And of course, all his cards have had to be read to him which takes the punch lines out of the funny ones for sure! It has been a busy day for him, with a stream of visitors all day and sometimes this probably became too much as he couldn't make sense of what was happening. Lots of people talking to each other rather than one at a time to Colin, is not a good scenario when there are no visual clues and the brain processing of what can be heard is not great and certainly not as fast enough as one would like!
At times I was not sure Colin even understood or remembered it was his birthday. Still we all tried and persisted. Perrins very kindly produced a cake with a candle to blow out, and the staff all appeared in his room with it this afternoon to sing the usual salutation! They also made some chocolate mousse knowing that cake would be difficult for Colin to eat. I had tried this earlier, as the Octogenarian had also been busy baking, but it is difficult to get the consistency of mashed cake into cream right for his palette, and so this wasn't successful.
However, during the day there were certainly windows of clarity, where Colin understood the conversation and was trying to join in, albeit it being difficult to understand his diction much of the time. Thank you to all of you who sent greetings in whatever format you thought of - I shall try to remind him tomorrow of today's event by re-reading them to him.
Jane
At times I was not sure Colin even understood or remembered it was his birthday. Still we all tried and persisted. Perrins very kindly produced a cake with a candle to blow out, and the staff all appeared in his room with it this afternoon to sing the usual salutation! They also made some chocolate mousse knowing that cake would be difficult for Colin to eat. I had tried this earlier, as the Octogenarian had also been busy baking, but it is difficult to get the consistency of mashed cake into cream right for his palette, and so this wasn't successful.
However, during the day there were certainly windows of clarity, where Colin understood the conversation and was trying to join in, albeit it being difficult to understand his diction much of the time. Thank you to all of you who sent greetings in whatever format you thought of - I shall try to remind him tomorrow of today's event by re-reading them to him.
Jane
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