The Beginning

(Originally posted in Facebook on February 6, 2019)

It’s been amazing to me – and not in a good way – the amount of time, effort and money it takes to get to a diagnosis for someone who is having memory and cognitive issues. And I work in health care.

I had a feeling that things weren’t right with my husband for a while, but it wasn’t anything I could say definitely or put my finger on exactly. There were conversations I would have sworn we had had or things I knew I had asked him to do and he would say I had not, but I always second guessed myself. Or told myself I was over-reacting about things that happened.

Finally, in the run-up to Christmas 2017, as we were decorating the house, M was upstairs putting the electric candles in the front windows and I was in the kitchen getting the timers for the candles out of the plastic packaging. We’ve had these candles in the windows every year as far back as I can remember and the set-up is pretty simple – two candles for each double window, plugged into one extension cord. That cord plugged into a timer which is plugged into the outlet underneath the window.

For some reason, it seems we either use the timers elsewhere during the year or they get misplaced, but we always seem to need new ones each year, so as M was setting up the candles, I was getting the new timers out of that hard shell packaging. After what seemed like an extraordinarily long time, he came down to the kitchen and told me he needed another timer. 
Me: No, you don’t
M: Yes, I do
Me: You couldn’t possibly need another timer.
M: Well, I do.
Me: I know darn good and well you don’t.
M: And I know I do.
Me: Okay, show me.
So we go upstairs to see how he needs another timer for one room and . . .

I wish you could have seen the fire hazard he had set up in our bedroom. He had one candle plugged into a timer, which was plugged into an extension cord, plugged into another extension cord and all this run under the bed and across the bedroom and plugged into the farthest wall from the window.

I just looked at this mess and said “No. What are you doing?” This was before I really understood what was going on with him. There was honestly a part of me that thought he was trying to be silly or joke around. So, we took everything apart and I reminded him that he was the one who showed me years before how to do all this – two candles into one extension cord into one timer.

The really scary part here was – I couldn’t get him to let go of the idea of plugging the candle into the timer until I took the timer out of the room where he couldn’t see it anymore and couldn’t focus on it. Then he could focus on the candles and the extension cord.

Right then I knew – we had a serious problem on our hands.

I guess this has gotten a little long for today. Tomorrow, I’ll continue the story of our slow, arduous path through the health care system.