(Originally posted in Facebook February 11, 2019)
Nothing like a gloomy, wet Monday to start a work week. This past weekend was uneventful. There was only one incident with M that concerned me. We have my parents, our older son and his family come to our house every Sunday night for dinner – it’s a great way to get everyone together and to see the grandkids on a regular basis. As I was trying to pull everything together last night, I asked M to help me by setting the table. Now, it’s always been apparent that he never had to do this growing up, the way my brothers and I did, because his mother didn’t drill the proper placement of the silverware into him the way my mother did into us. I’ve always had to tell him “fork on the left, knife and spoon on the right, knife on the inside,” just like I did last night. But, of course, last night was different. He still wasn’t getting it. So I said, “here, let me do one as an example,” and I set one up for him. Then I went on with what I had been doing and left him to it. We had seven people for dinner last night . . . when I went back into the dining room after he had gone back downstairs, there were seven different set-ups for the silverware on each placemat. No two were the same – even the example I had done for him had been changed. And each placemat had two napkins on it – one on the left side and one on the right. I didn’t say a word. I fixed everything, so that no one would notice (and I knew he would never pick up on it – he didn’t) and dinner went off without a hitch.
As M and I continued with the neurologist’s office and the interminable appointments for testing, the next one on the agenda would be with the psychologist. He would complete a four-hour assessment . . . but first he would meet with M and go over his earlier test results and then let us know in a couple of weeks if he would accept M as a patient. Really?!?! Your colleague IN YOUR PRACTICE has referred my husband for an assessment, but you have to decide whether or not you want to take him on?!?! That was one of the days I came really close to biting a hole in my tongue!!
After several weeks, M finally got the green light, so he met with the psychologist for a short session of testing, while I waited in the lobby. I was called into the office to talk to both of them for a few minutes at the end of the appointment and I got the feeling that the doctor didn’t understand why M was in the office. Ahh . . . I thought – M must have done well on these tests. The doctor asked M why he was coming in for these visits and these tests and he motioned at me with his thumb, “You’d have to ask her.” Great. Now I’m “her.” I calmly explained that I was concerned about his memory and cognitive issues and told the story of the candles in the window at Christmas. I could feel M scoffing at what he called my over-reacting and was afraid that the doctor was going to agree with him. Believe it or not, I was relieved when the doctor said he wanted to continue with testing and wanted to schedule the much longer test with M. This was May or June and, thanks to vacations and health care systems buying out different physician practices, it would be nearly October before M would actually take the four hour psychological assessment.