Tag: Alzheimers

(Originally posted in Facebook on March 14, 2019)

It’s a beautiful day around here – spring might be here to stay! (Watch it snow next week – ha!)

Yesterday, I was on my way home from work when the phone rang and it was M, wondering where I was. I’ll admit, I had stopped by the store on my way home and was 10 minutes later than normal, but not excessively late. There are one or two evenings a week I’ll stop for gas or to pick up an item or two on the way home, so this isn’t out of the ordinary, and I’m never later than 6 pm getting home.

When I got to the house, I asked M about it and he said:
“I was worried about you – you should have been here by 5:30.”
Now, even if I walked out the door of my office EXACTLY as the clock chimed 5 pm, there is no way I could make it home by 5:30. It’s a 35 minute drive, door-to-door.

So, we talked about his expectations of when I should be home and the reality of when I can actually get there. I think I’m going to have to post a note that says something like “Don’t worry until AFTER 6 pm.” I appreciate that he cares, but I hate that feeling that I’m racing home to beat his internal clock.

We attended the neighborhood meeting last night, which went well. He was engaged and attentive. My mom came to the meeting with us and, when we drove her home, he walked her into the house and made sure she got in safely, which I thought was very kind. He has such a good heart and is the sweetest man I know. I’m so grateful that this part of his personality hasn’t been lost.

(Originally posted in Facebook on March 13, 2019)

Yesterday was a good day!

There have been some disturbing incidents happening in our neighborhood lately and a neighborhood watch meeting has been scheduled for tonight, so M and I drove around for about 30 minutes, after I got home from work, posting flyers about the meeting. Then we went to our son and daugther-in-law’s house to babysit two of our grandchildren while the oldest one had baseball practice. I can’t believe they’re practicing this early in the spring! (It’s not even spring yet!!)

And it was a really good evening! M was engaged and focused the entire time. He interacted with both grandchildren, read to the 4 year old, played with the 6 month old, watched TV without music on . . . it was all good stuff! Nothing extraordinary – but extraordinary in its normalcy.

I would LOVE more days like this.

(Originally posted in Facebook March 11, 2019)

What a crazy, busy weekend! I don’t care what anyone else says – I will miss that hour of sleep until we get it back in October. I understand all the hype about it being daylight later, but it was so dark this morning, it really messed up the start of the day.

A part of our work this weekend was to continue our de-cluttering efforts. We’re starting to see real progress and I think that makes it seem even more worthwhile. There were several little things that happened with M over the weekend – nothing major – but just little bumps in the road that remind me of the long road we’re on.

As we were finishing up one of our cleaning hours and were putting things away, I handed M some coins we had found and asked him to put them in a piggy bank we have on the counter of the kitchen. Later that day, I found the coins sitting on the kitchen counter, about three inches from the piggy bank.

On the same day, we also found a stack of note pads and I handed those to M and asked him to take them to the den because we never seem to have anything to write on when we need to make a note in the den. I later found those note pads in the kitchen junk drawer.

M was working on the laundry and we ran out of detergent. He found me to tell me and I told him that I knew we had run out, but that there was a bottle of liquid Tide on top of the dryer (we normally use Persil.) He asked if it was okay if we used Tide.

Again, none of these things are dangerous or major incidents. No one is hurt by them. But they show me that I need to check behind him on just about everything he does – which gets to be exhausting! He got frustrated trying to put gas in the car, fussing about how the machine wouldn’t take his card, but the problem was him. The machine was asking for his zip code and he was entering his four digit PIN code.

I know there aren’t any easy answers. I’ll just keep looking for blessings and miracles where I can find them.

(Originally posted in Facebook on March 8, 2019)

The purge continues!

No, not those horrible movies (that I refuse to watch) but the 40 days, 40 bags cleaning out/de-cluttering purge. What a great feeling!

After we worked so long and were so tired Wednesday night, we decided that we would truly stick to the one bag per day idea. Once we had filled a bag, we were done for the day. That worked much better. It took about an hour for us to fill a bag and then we spent the rest of the evening relaxing and watching TV.

When I left for work yesterday, I started the dishwasher and I put a sticky note on it that said “clean” so M would know the dishes had been washed. Last night, I opened the dishwasher to load some dirty dishes and saw that he had put away the dishes from the bottom rack of the dishwasher, but the clean dishes from the top rack were still in there. No problem – I put them away quickly and moved on.

An area I’ve noticed M having trouble with is garbage vs. recycling. We have a trash area in our kitchen that has two trash containers – one for garbage and one for recycling. The town we live in has recently mailed out new guidelines on what can and cannot be recycled and we have posted those guidelines on the refrigerator. Not a day goes by that I’m not pulling garbage out of the recycling bin or recycling out of the garbage bin. Again – it’s not a problem . . . no one is hurt if a piece of trash goes in the wrong spot. It’s just that sometimes I get tired of being the one in charge of everything.

Maybe that’s the problem right there – I’m just tired.

(Originally posted in Facebook on March 7, 2019)

Yesterday, I received the best news I’ve had in a long time – I don’t have jury duty today! I can’t begin to tell you how excited I was to find out that bit of information. Isn’t that terrible? Now, I have a teeth cleaning at the end of the month to look forward to. Ugh.

Leading up to yesterday, the first day of Lent, I had read about an idea called 40 days, 40 bags – where you use the time during Lent to de-clutter your home. So, M and I started last night with our older son’s old bedroom and dug into his former closet. Wow! We found his high school graduation cap and gown, his baby book, flyers from when he started a lawn cutting business as a teenager, report cards . . . it was amazing! There were also tons of clothes that M and I hadn’t worn in 20 years that needed to be purged.

It took longer than I had planned, because we did more than just one bag of “stuff” to donate or throw out, but I think from now on, we’ll stick to the one bag rule. We were exhausted by the time we were through. M was a great help, although he did want to hang on to some pants that he hasn’t worn since we moved into this house 20 years ago. I had him try them on . . . and that was all it took. They joined the “donate” pile.

The only glitch I noticed during the evening was when M saw that the trash can in the bedroom where we were working was full. He went to the kitchen to get a garbage bag and came back with a grocery bag from the last time we went shopping. I was expecting a large, 50 gallon garbage bag to hold all the things we were throwing away. It didn’t matter . . . it wasn’t important and the trash was easily combined in a large bag once we were done. But it’s more insight into how he’s thinking and what’s going on.

(Originally posted in Facebook on March 6, 2019)

Yesterday, I had lunch with a group of women and we talked about being strong. Not in any particular situation, but generally speaking, how women are emotionally and mentally strong. I think most days, I’m doing well. There are blips on the radar, but I usually get through each day with few, if any, tears and with a positive attitude.

Until yesterday afternoon.

Not exactly sure what happened, or where it came from, but I met with someone in my employer’s HR department to talk about FMLA and insurance and all the fun stuff you have to think about for the future. I did get a little teary-eyed as I explained M’s situation and why I was asking all these questions, but that’s not unusual. But as the HR person handed me a tissue, I could feel a hysterical crying fit coming on. The kind where your chest is going to start heaving in uncontrollable sobbing and you won’t be able to stop. It took everything I had to hold that in and keep it from spilling over – because work and the HR office was NOT the place I wanted that to happen.

A friend asked me last week if my doctor had prescribed any medication for anxiety or to help me sleep. No, is the answer, but I told her that chocolate is my drug of choice, followed closely by carbs – namely good bread. We won’t discuss what these “drugs” are doing to my waistline or how they will affect swimsuit season (ha!) Right now, a sleeve of thin mint Girl Scout cookies is all I need to make me happy.

M and I watched TV last night and it was one of our favorite nights of the week – the night we watch all the Chicago shows . . . Chicago PD, Chicago Fire and Chicago Med. We watch on one of the streaming services. They’re fast-paced shows with interesting plots, but he watched all three with headphones on, listening to music.

I guess as long as he’s happy, it doesn’t matter. 

(Originally posted in Facebook on March 5, 2019)

Some changes have been so subtle and slow that I have hardly noticed them happening. Other have happened so quickly that it’s almost as though I’ve been hit in the head with the difference.

Yesterday, as he was getting ready to go to work, M complained that he wasn’t feeling well. Nothing specific, just not well. I felt as though I was trying to encourage a fifth grader out the door, “Just give it a try. You’ll feel better, once you get there and see all your friends.” When our kids were little and seemed to be getting sick all the time, I used to BEG him to take time off work and stay home with them so I could go into work and not use up all my sick days. He would say there was NO WAY he could miss a day or it would be a real juggling act to make it happen. Now, it’s rare if he’s at work all five days in a week.

He left for work, but he was back home before I left the house for the day. He said that he had gotten there, but had gotten sick in the parking lot. This morning, I asked more about it and he said he had gotten sick “a little bit.” I don’t really understand what that means – either you get sick and lose your breakfast or you don’t – but I have a feeling he won’t be working much longer.

Before I got home yesterday, he decided to run an errand (yes, he was feeling better!) and I saw I had missed a call from him during the afternoon. It took a while for us to connect and when I talked to him, he told me he had wanted to ask me what his PIN code was for his debit card – he couldn’t remember it. That made me realize there are several codes and passwords of his that I don’t know and I should probably have him write them down now. While we can.

Last night, I asked M to get a garbage bag and get the trash from the various trash cans around the house for garbage day today. He asked me where the trash bags are. I didn’t say that they were under the sink, where they have been for the last 20 years. I just pointed to the cabinet under the sink and said, “right under there.”

Does it seem as though this ball is rolling faster as it’s going downhill? Some days – yes. Other days – I would tell you that it seems as though nothing has changed. Those are the days I live for. Those days are becoming fewer and fewer.