Miscellany

I used to blog weekly. Things used to happen weekly. New things. Often depressing things. Sad things. Angry things. I don't miss sad, angry depressing things at all. Something occasionally new, however, would be a nice break. That means that things are pretty much routine. He talks about marrying his girlfriend every now and then. Sometimes more than others. Some weeks hardly at all. It is almost like he has forgotten her. Then, wham, he talks about it daily. Last week he wanted to drive again. This week he wanted to get a job. Hurray! When he couldn't do either, and I didn't tell him he couldn't, I just ignored his comments, he forgot about them almost immediately and there was no lingering anger. But the comments were nothing new. Even the lack of anger is not new anymore. His emotions are quite flat.

He told me yesterday about wanting to marry his girlfriend. He said that I should meet her. I told him that I have met her. He said that he had wished that he were there when I met her. I told him that he had been there when I met her. He said, oh, I don't remember that. End of conversation. This week he wanted to clean the porch. He did a good job. He hasn't shown much initiative lately, so this was something almost new. He used to ask to clean the porch frequently. So, it was something he has done but has shown almost no interest in doing again. Then he wanted to. We might call his current condition a hiccup in his overall decline. He is having a slightly brighter spell after a long decline. Two years ago when these episodes occurred I thought the doctors might have been wrong in their initial assessment. Now I know that hiccups happen.

It is sometimes like a daily "Flowers for Algernon" scenario. It is still strange however to see him barely function for days or weeks and then act like a nearly normal eighty-something for a few days and then revert to struggling to speak, think and respond. I think that I have come to hate hiccups. They seem more emotionally traumatizing to him than the process of decline. When he is clear he wants things that he cannot have. When he is in noticeable decline he doesn't usually want things, except to marry his girlfriend. When he is clear he wants to know why he can't. When he isn't clear he just accepts that it will have to wait a little longer to take place. There are days when I don't know who is having the slower death, the patient or the caregiver. The long goodbye is very long. In this regard there is no real sunshine in the descent.