We returned Friday night (this is Monday) from a visit with Jesse’s family for Thanksgiving. Everything went well. Kate got along well. I don’t think a thing happened that would give either Jesse or Greg a clue that she has AD. One thing I will note is that Kate seems to have developed a more positive view of other people than she had before. I have noticed this for a good while – perhaps a year. That starts with me. She tells me much more often than she used to that she is glad she married me, that I am good to her, etc. I see the same thing in her judgment of other people. In particular she comments about how smart people are. I think this is a reflection of her inability to do so many things and her seeing others do these normal things without any effort.
Now on to the reason I chose the headline above. This past Saturday we went to Gregory’s for lunch. Near the end of our meal, Kate wanted to take a moment to update her calendar. She is working harder to jot down things she needs to remember in her calendar. She asked me when we were leaving for New York. I told her Wed., Dec. 5. I also told her that I thought she had already entered the information. She checked and said that she had. She asked me what time we were leaving. I gave her the departure and arrival times. First, she is getting good at trying not to digest too much information; so she held her hand up to stop me when I went beyond the departure time. Before moving on to the date and times for our trip back to Knoxville the following week, she struggled to get the correct information into her calendar. It took several minutes before she was ready to move on. I then gave her the arrival time in NY. That took her a little bit of time. Then we went to the return trip. This became a struggle, and she finally asked me to do it for her. When I checked the departure date and time, I found that she had entered it incorrectly. My point is that this can be looked upon as a sad situation and a frustrating one; however, we both laughed through it from beginning to end. This is not necessarily typical of these situations, but it is common. It reminds me of the way Dad reacts in many situations. He will just smile and say, “”My brain just won’t let me do it.” It is really something going through these things with both of them, but it is good news that we are sometimes able to make light of the situation.
An hour after writing the above I received a call from Kate asking me for the phone number for the president of our neighborhood association. The interesting thing is that I had just given her his cell phone number 20-30 minutes earlier. She also has both his and his wife’s cell phone numbers and home phone in the directory that she was using yesterday to make calls. She specifically indicated she had their numbers. I am sure, however, that she is simply unable to remember where she put the number I had just given her or that she has their number in the directory.
