The Underwear Inventory

If it weren't for my lovely bride, Dad would be in a home. That isn't just true of now. Taking care of an Alzheimer's patient is not routine work. The things that she does take a lot of time, energy and patience. At the outset, when Dad first moved in, we had gone over a list of things that if he did them, he would have to go to a home. How little did we know then what love and care really meant. While it isn't that I don't have a fair number of responsibilities with my dad, my bride has and does the lion's share of the care. As the disease progresses, so does the load.

One thing that plagues my dad is bowel accidents. Now, they are nobody's favorite topic or event, but they are a frequent part of Dad's life. When he came to live with us 2 1/2 years ago, they were part of his life then, but not to any extent what they are today. It is not uncommon to have an accident 4 or 5 times a week. It is how he deals with them that creates the topic of this blog. When he has an accident in the middle of the night, he goes to his bathroom and rinses out his dirty underwear. (No, he doesn't shower himself, just rinses his underwear and maybe rinses himself as well.) Then he returns his underwear to his room where he hangs them somewhere, wherever he may choose at the time, to dry. A couple of hours later he will wake up again and take the damp underwear down and hide them.

He might stick them in his underwear drawer with the clean ones. He might hide them in the spare bottom drawer of his dresser. He might hide them in the bathroom cabinet. He might hide them under his TV. He might hide them under the cover on the back of his computer chair. I know that he might hide them in all of those places because he has. The next morning he will bring to the laundry room his dirty t-shirt and socks from the previous day. Then my bride has to pay careful attention to the wash. Where, oh where, are the underpants? She has to take an inventory of his dirty clothes daily. If the underwear is not there, she has to go find them. Some days it is easy. The bottom drawer had been his favorite place, but he is getting more creative. Last week she had to search for almost 3 hours to find them. She almost came to the conclusion that he had worn two pairs that day, but she persisted because the smell told her that he had a dirty pair somewhere.

Yes, the smell. Accidents produce that. They produce dirty bed linens also which increases her wash load daily. Besides the smell, however, is the challenge of finding which pair is dirty if he puts them back into the clean underwear drawer. That is accomplished by having to have an underwear inventory. She knows which pair he wears everyday so she can tell which pair he wore yesterday. That is a job that requires a lot of love. I am a lucky man! It also, though, requires from her a lot of time, the biggest commodity required for caregivers of an Alzheimer's patient. No, we can't get him to change what he does and just put his dirty undies in a basket. He vehemently denies that he has ever had an accident or that if he, that he would do such a thing as to hide the underwear. That is his reality. Being the queen of underwear inventory is the reality for my bride. That might not be the sunshine, but it is the reality of descent with Alzheimer's disease.