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.