Recovering or Not

It has been two weeks since Dad was sick. He had it for only one day. Lucky him. He passed it on to me and I had it for a week. But he was over his in 24 hours. He lost 10 pounds in one day. That is 10 pounds he didn't need to lose. His Alzheimer's is already affecting his system and he was beginning to lose weight anyway. But he lost 10 pounds in one day. Then he didn't eat anything for almost 2 more days. He said he had no appetite, so he drank sports drink and stayed in his room. Altogether he lost 12 pounds. But it is not just how it affected his body that tells the real story.

It took it out of his mind as well. I was really too sick the next whole week to notice much myself. He had stayed in his room most of Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and I got sick on Friday and was out of the loop until the following Friday. I suppose everyone else noticed it right away, but they aren't blogging this, so I didn't notice it for last week's blog. But it is noticeable. He has had more slurred speech, more started and unfinished sentences, more confusion of days and activities than normal. His stomach flu took him on a downward spiral that he will never recover from. It accelerated what was already happening in his body and mind. That's the way it is with Alzheimer's disease. The mind will never heal.

He is back to the adult care center again after missing the week he was sick and recovering. They called this week to let us know that he won't be playing the piano as much there anymore. He just doesn't do it very well anymore. If he will sit and play slowly he still gets most of his songs correct. But he said to me the other day, "What fun is it to sit and play softly? Music is made to be pounded away!" And when he pounds away in double cut time he misses about half the notes, changes keys at random and changes the time signature to fit whatever is going on in his mind at the time. I haven't enjoyed listening to him at home for months. It is painfully loud and I seldom know what he is playing. The sad thing is he has no clue how bad it is. He wants to play for church. He is always asking my bride if she would like to take a Sunday off so he can play. No, NO, a thousand times NO.

He has also begun to lose things with more regularity. He lost so much weight that his wedding ring can just slip on and off. The other day at adult care it slipped off. They called us and asked us to describe his ring, which my bride could do perfectly. They said that they had found it but he said it wasn't his. So, we got it and told him we found it in the basement in his dirty clothes. He still said it wasn't his. His ring is very unique with special patterning that makes it easily identifiable. It is his ring, but that is beside the point. He says it isn't. His reason is that he thinks he should have a different ring that he remembers from years ago. He can describe it perfectly, but he hasn't had it for 40 years. That is a nasty mind skip, but it has happened since he was ill. When we picked up his ring they also gave us a number of other items that he had "lost" over the past several weeks. He hadn't brought them home because he didn't think they were his. He did wear a scarf home that he was unhappy with. "They just gave me this one today," he said, "but I have never seen it before." He had worn it to the center in the morning. He didn't recognize that nor the one that he had worn there daily for weeks and had left behind. This is the aftermath of his illness. It has shaken the stability of his condition that had been seemingly steady for some time. Where that takes us from here is now way up in the air. The one certainty about Alzheimer's is that nothing is certain. That applies to his future as well as his mind.

TMI

Who is Joe? Joe is a man like most every other man. He is a man with a life history, a past with memories, a present with a variety of activities. Joe was a veteran of the Great War, a school teacher, a business man, a family man. He raised, or help raise, eight children and step children. He is a grandfather and a great grandfather. (Two of those great grandchildren are my grandchildren.)

Joe is also a man not like every other man. His memories are frailer. Today he may remember one of those names and tomorrow forget it. He will stare at a picture and say, "I know who they are, who are they?" Today he will tell me about each of his cousins. Tomorrow one of them will call and he will say, "Who was that?" The next day he will give family trees of each married cousin and where they currently live.

Joe is a man whose life is troubled and frustrating to himself and a challenge to others working with him. What to expect, which Joe will get up in the morning or come to the supper table at night is a constant mystery. Mid sentence he can move from Joe A to Joe B.

So, what does he remember and talk about the most? There was the trip that he took years ago to see lighthouses along the Atlantic coast. Each detail is etched in his mind. Conversations that the children had on the trip are repeated as often as the story. Then the sadness comes. None of those people keep in contact with him. It is a memory without a connection. I wasn't on the trip (but I could give you the itinerary). There was the trip to Seattle and Vancouver Island with the one person that he most wants to see and cannot. There were many trips that I never took with him, but others did, others who have lost contact with him. He shares the memories with me with the wistfulness of a happy time combined with a confused disconnection with the people he had those happy times with. He was a man who liked to travel, and those are his most often told stories. He remembers going places, and each place is connected to a person or people. To me they are just stories. To others they would be memories. So he shares with me stories that bring him as much angst as joy. That is the case with Joe, the man whose memories and mind are in a flux between the disquieting present the secure past.

How long can Joe stay like this? A year ago I would not have thought very long. The diagnosis wasn't good and a quick decline was forecast. Well, my bride and I have taken good care of him. The result is that he is healthy in body and stabilized in mind. He cannot back up and be independent. That is gone. And there is decline, but it is mild compared to the expectation. Others, including medical professionals, still say that he is capable of fooling many people that he has no problems if they talk to him on a good day. That means he could stay like this a long time. Stay being frustrated between two minds, between memories and reality, between desire and capability.

Sick and Recovering

It hasn't been the most eventful week for Dad. He has been sick, I mean really sick. On Monday night he was up much of the night going to the bathroom and Tuesday morning he began vomiting. I took him to the doctor who sent him to the hospital for tests who gave him tests and a shot to stop the vomiting and sent him home. He hasn't been able to go to adult care this week, but mostly he has slept to get some strength back. Last night he had a full supper, his first real full meal since Monday. He seems much better today physically. He was certainly chatty at lunch today rambling on with a mix of old stories that were unconnected. Even when no one was paying any more attention, since he wasn't going anywhere and all the stories are old, he still sat there chatting away. He told us just before going back to his room that he can use all the music he had planned for last Tuesday when he goes back to "that place" again next Tuesday and play the piano. With that he waved good bye and left. That is his week.

Been a while

Well, it has been a while. Right after the fish story my computer was hit by lightning. Boo hoo. Then, since I had received no feedback from the blog, I figured no one was reading it except the one person who kept telling me how depressing it was and why did I write it. So, when I got my computer repaired and was no longer in the habit of blogging, I stopped. But, over Christmas I was asked why it had disappeared. That's why. I will start again.

Dad had a pretty good Christmas. It was wearing on him and he was often bothered by all the company. He can, however, go to his room and have time to himself, and he did that a lot. His favorite pastime is to do "word search" puzzles. He got a couple of books for Christmas and has been busy doing them. Just before Christmas he had also won a big word search book at the adult care center he attends 3 days a week. He should be taken care of until February.

Dad is still at the adult care center 3 days a week. It had been up to five, but my bride and I went on vacation last summer for a week. During that week he stayed at my brother's house. It was a routine breaking event. When he got home he announced that he was never going back to "that place" again. He didn't mean my brother's house. Well, we did all that we could do to get him to go back the first Monday after Labor Day, and he agreed. But when he was there he told them he was never coming back again. He didn't either, not for a while.

It was in his mind, the one thing that is always in his mind, to go see Dar. That is his conversation daily. He had figured that if he didn't go to adult care, then obviously he could go to Chicago. Therein lies his faulty thinking center. There was no real connection between the two ideas, but he was convinced that if he didn't do the one, then he could do the other. Since his health care benefits are partially tied to going to adult care, this was not going to be good for him, but he neither understood or cared. Finally the visiting nurse impressed upon him the absolute need to go back, and how he is back 3 days a week.

He came home from the center on this past Tuesday so happy that he had met a new man who was coming and they had hit it off well. He was talking about what a good time he had had and on an on. At supper that night I suggested that since he had a new friend and was having such a good time, he might want to go back to going five days a week. He didn't hesitate a moment, but snapped sharply in reply, "I don't want to go any days. I want to go less not more." The subject was dropped. That is how it is. If you try to feed off of what he seems to be saying, it doesn't mean that he is thinking those things at all.

So, how has he been in general since last May? Well, according the Alzheimer's material we got, he should have shown significant decline in all areas. He hasn't. There has been decline in some areas, but none in other areas. He actually has learned some new things, which according to the literature and the seminars, is not supposed to be possible. He absolutely cannot take care of himself. He doesn't initiate things. But, if my wife gets him going, he can accomplish a good deal. With guidance he operates fairly well. We have a new message board by his room where my wife writes down his schedule for the next day before she goes to bed at night. It helps him get the one or two things on the schedule taken care of. Those items might include things as simple as taking a shower, which needs to be scheduled or it is not done. That's it for today. I will try to get back on next Friday.