Vignettes From a COVID Holiday

*Or a couple of lessons learned while watching HOURS of soccer documentaries.

Hello from the front lines! Despite all the preventative measures I’ve taken – shopping online, wearing a mask, washing my hands, not going ANYWHERE – I still managed to test positive for coronavirus right after New Year’s day.

Sigh. The one variable I forgot to account for was our younger son coming back into town.

Sadly, he went back to Alabama and has been very sick. I was essentially symptom-free and M tested negative. That O-type blood managed to keep him healthy!

While I had to stay at the house, quarantined, M wanted to be with me. Glued to my hip. Which meant we watched a lot of television together. After Dr. Pol and The Dog Whisperer episodes started repeating on Nat Geo, and I refused to watch Star Trek, we finally agreed to watch a couple of series on Amazon Prime on two English soccer teams – Leeds United and Tottenham Hotspur.

I now know more about English Premier League soccer than I ever imagined possible. I know the rivalries. The stadiums. Financial issues, recruitment goals, marketing plans . . . you name it. I am well versed in this subject.

Here’s what else I learned, after a week + at home with my dementia patient.

Even after you’ve promised yourself that you’re not going to ask any more “why” questions (because they only lead to unpleasant disagreements,) “what” questions are almost as bad. For instance, “what are you doing?” when he has lined up three pairs of gloves and two toboggans on the counter, but plans to stay indoors all day doesn’t elicit as calm a response as you might hope.

As much as M will tell me he wants to be helpful, when given the opportunity to actually BE helpful, all good intentions go flying right out the window. When we packed up our den to paint and remodel, the house phone for that room disappeared. I know it’s in a box somewhere – I just can’t put my hands on it. So one day last week, I asked M to take the dogs for a walk and, while he was out, stop at my dad’s and borrow a phone. Dad doesn’t have a house phone anymore and can loan us one. You would have thought I had given him the biggest task in the world. I had never heard so much grumbling and groaning in my life. But we finally have a phone in the den, and I don’t have to sprint up the stairs to answer it in the kitchen.

Money is officially out of M’s grasp. While I was out last week, M needed/wanted a loaf of bread, so I drove him to the neighborhood grocery store. He was armed with a $10 bill and assured me he knew where to go in the store to get what he needed. When he came back to the car, he reached in the bag and handed me $1 and told me that was all the change. When I insisted $1 couldn’t be all the change from buying a loaf of bread with $10 (and M strongly insisted it WAS) he finally pulled the receipt out of the bag . . . along with another $1 bill and a $5. That’s more like it.

Being quarantined in the house with M for over a week was a challenge. Lots of deep breathing took place and lots of pauses to avoid saying the wrong thing. We need to find something for him to do during the day. Between COVID and how young he is, compared to most adult day-care programs, I just don’t know what we’re going to do.