Once in a while I feel a little guilty about the way I respond to both Dad and Kate. Last night, for example, I had turned my cell phone on vibrate while we were attending our music club meeting. I forgot to turn it back to ringer when we returned home. This morning when I got up I noticed that I had missed 3 calls and had 3 voicemails from Dad – all around 11:30. He indicated that he was a little disoriented and was sitting on the side of the bed and could not find his call button. In his first voicemail, he said something about thinking he was in a kitchen somewhere. Although 99% of his calls involve no urgency or crisis, once in a while he needs something like last night when he couldn’t find his call button. Two nights in the past week or 10 days, he has placed 10 calls one night and 8 calls another. Most of these calls he doesn’t even say anything because he can’t hear anything said on my end. Nonetheless, I want him to feel that he can reach me when he is unable to get attention from the staff; so I feel guilty that I wasn’t available for him.
Similarly, I occasionally find myself not being as patient with Kate as I should be. In spite of her forgetfulness, she does remember a lot; so I tend to expect her to remember things that she doesn’t remember. The other day I asked her if she remembered some person or occasion from a few years back. She indicated that she had no memory of him/it and said, “”You forget I have Alzheimer’s.” Most of the time I do remember and don’t criticize or even point out her mistakes, but sometimes I give a response that shows I am treating her as though she does not have Alzheimer’s. I feel a tinge of guilt when this happens.
Late yesterday afternoon we went over to Panera Bread to get a bite before going to the music club. It was beautiful outside and we chose to eat at an outside table. We sat at the very same table we had sat at a few days ago. After sitting down, Kate said, “”This is the first time we have sat outside here.” I said, “”Do you want me to answer honestly?” She naturally said, yes.” I told her that we had just eaten outside a couple of days before. Then I felt guilty because I felt she had no choice but to say she wanted the truth but that giving her the truth did not serve any useful purpose.
The weekend was stressful. Kate had agreed to help with refreshments for Monday’s meeting of the music club. When she did this, I was concerned and suggested we purchase what we needed rather than prepare them ourselves. She felt she really wanted to make them herself. I notice there are a number of occasions when she wants to volunteer to do something like this when I think it is too stressful for her. It seems important to her, however, to retain as much of her ability to do things as she can. I can easily understand this, but what troubles me is that 1) I know I will need to help her and that will be difficult for me because they are usually things that are not my cup of tea and 2) she is going to be stressed in doing what she wants and has committed herself to do.
At any rate, as we go to the weekend, I told her I would go to the grocery store for her. Then I had to push her a little to actually get started with the cooking on Sunday afternoon. I was pushing especially hard because I wanted to accomplish as much as I could before going to see Dad and also because she wanted to attend a performance of Verdi’s Requiem Sunday night. She is very slow to move. This has been true for several years. In fact, she has never been sensitive to time. I now believe one of the consequences of Alzheimer’s is moving more slowly because the brain functions more slowly.
One of the first things that I noticed in cooking was that she let me take the lead in getting things done. That is very unnatural for us in that I am not and have never been a cook in the baking sense. Cooking meat on the grill is a different matter. Despite her wanting to do things for herself, when it gets down to getting it done, she has to depend on me. When she does this, I get the greatest sense of her having Alzheimer’s.
In other situations she does beautifully. For example, last night at the music club, I don’t think anyone would ever suspect that she has Alzheimer’s. She is able to converse quite naturally and confidently. It is only when she has to make her brain work – e.g., figure something out like quantities in a recipe the way we were doing Sunday. Sunday she put 2 cups of sugar in the crust for the lemon squares and the sugar was supposed to be in the lemon itself. Fortunately, the lemon squares were edible and people in general liked them, but the crust was crystalized sugar and not like it usually is. Before leaving the house on Monday morning, we tried to prepare praline cookies. I left just as she was putting them in the oven since I thought the recipe was simple and one she had prepared many times. It turned out that she had to throw away one cookie tray because she had overcooked them.
When we got home last night, she was able to unwind. She was happy that people had liked what she had prepared even if we did not think they were up to her standards. When we went to bed, she indicated that she was relaxed and did not plan to volunteer to something like that again. That certainly made me feel better.
