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June 3, 2026June 4, 2026

Our Lives After Kate’s Diagnosis, Part 6: Adapting to Isolation After COVID

In an earlier post, I talked about two ways that COVID changed our lives. One was isolating us after nine years of active lives that kept us enjoying life and each other. The other was Sarah’s hospitalization with COVID. Each of these required us to focus on new ways to enjoy life.

Some of the things we did prior to the pandemic were things that we could do afterward as well. That included our collection of family photobooks that contain a variety of historical family information and photos.

Of course, music played a major role in our lives but in different ways. We couldn’t attend concerts, so we added another way to enjoy music. We started watching music videos on YouTube. That gave us a wide variety of music we could tap into at any time of day.

Before the pandemic, Kate’s only self-initiated activity was working jigsaw puzzles on her iPad 6-8 hours a day. She lost that ability during the first week of the pandemic. That put more pressure on me to entertain her.

One of the ways I did that was to act as a docent in our home. There were stories that went along with many of the pieces of furniture as well as paintings and knick-knacks. At that stage of Alzheimer’s, she would quickly forget what I told her, so that made it easy to tell her the same stories over and over.

It was during the pandemic that Kate experienced what is common among people with dementia. She wanted to go home. The obvious answer to this is to say, “We are at home”. I knew it made no sense to contradict her; she didn’t realize she was at home. I would say, “Well, let’s do that.” Then we went to the car and drove around for 15-30 minutes and came back home. Some days, we did that as many as three times. It never failed. Each time we arrived home, she was pleased to be there, at least until the next time.

Activities like these kept us going until both of us got COVID in November, 2020. More about that in a later post.

May 26, 2026June 3, 2026

Our Lives After Kate’s Diagnosis

Part 5: Major Changes

Apart from the changes in our lives that I mentioned in my previous post, there have been two other changes that have had a greater impact on us. They both involved COVID. Before it came onto the scene around March 2020, our lives were already shrinking, but we had no idea how the Pandemic would affect our lives.

Prior to Pandemic, we spent an hour or hour and a half every morning at Panera and about the same amount of time at the café at Barnes and Noble every afternoon. Coupled with eating out for lunch and dinner, we were away from home a large part of every day.

COVID brought that to a halt. Suddenly, we were trapped in our home without the social contact we had enjoyed for so long, but that wasn’t all the damage COVID left for us. The biggest hit occurred when Kate and I had COVID almost eight months later when it seemed safer to get out. My case was mild and ended quickly, but she was hospitalized for eight days. That changed her life forever. It wasn’t COVID alone that hurt us. The whole experience was traumatizing for her.

She was frightened by the ambulance attendants who were naturally strangers to her. As they took her out the front door to the ambulance, she was screaming, “Help me! Help me! Somebody help me!. To her, it must have seemed as though she were being kidnapped. I was the only one she knew, but the hospital did not allow visitors at the time.

She was without me for eight days. She didn’t know anything about COVID or that she was sick. All she knew was that strangers had taken her out of comfort zone, and in the hospital they were doing things she didn’t understand and didn’t like. The impact on her was so great that she didn’t want to be touched when she got home, and we had to do the same kind of things they had done in the hospital to take care of her daily needs.

Before COVID and her hospitalization, Kate was beginning to lose her mobility and was in the early stage of aphasia. COVID made them a permanent part of her life. For five months, we began to adapt to a new world in our home. Then we moved to Still Hopes Episcopal Retirement Community where we live today. We have established a new routine that is significantly more restricted than before, but we are living joyfully despite the combination of Alzheimer’s, COVID, and a stroke Kate experienced a year after our move.

May 21, 2026May 25, 2026

What Kate and I Did After Her Diagnosis: Part 4. Everything Changes

I’m not a Buddhist, but I know that one of the fundamental tenets is the “impermanence” of everything. Nothing stays the same. All of us experience that, but “Living with Alzheimer’s” has given me a greater appreciation of impermanence than I had before.

During the first nine years of our journey, we were able to live happily, but we couldn’t prevent the kind of changes that Alzheimer’s brings with it. Each one has made our world a little smaller than when we began.

In addition to the activities we enjoyed together, Kate had her own activities that were important to her. They included use of her computer, driving her car, tending to her plants around our yard, activities with her P.E.O. chapter, as well as weekly lunches and shopping excursions with her dear friend Arletta Raley. She lost all of these things during the first eight years after her diagnosis.

We also lost several things that had been important to both of us. One of those was movies. With the progression of her Alzheimer’s, she became less able to follow movies. The last two we saw were close together in 2018, seven years after the diagnosis. That same year, we dropped weekly performances of the “Live in HD at the Met” operas in one of our local movie theaters.

Travel also became more difficult. Our last international trip was in 2015. In 2018, we made our last trips to visit our children.

The worst was yet to come; however, I will save that until next time.

May 12, 2026May 25, 2026

What We Did After Kate’s Diagnosis: Part 3, Travel

Travel had been an important part of our lives from the early years of our marriage. When our children were 4 and 2, we took them to Spain and France for six weeks. Three years later, we took them with us to Colombia, South America for the summer. While there, we took trips to Ecuador and Venezuela. When we became empty nesters, we began to travel more, mostly in Europe.

One of the first things we thought we were likely to lose was our ability to travel. In particular, we had wanted to visit Africa, Machu Picchu, the Galápagos Islands, New Zealand, and Switzerland. We were successful in getting to all of them. We engaged in a number of activities we had wanted to experience. We took a safari in Tanzania, took a balloon ride over the Serengeti, paraglided off a mountain slope in Switzerland and somersaulted on the way to the ground.

Travel was becoming more difficult for Sarah, so Switzerland was our last international trip. Two years later, we took our last trip to Chautauqua, NY, our favorite summer getaway.

In 2018, we took our last trips to visit our children and grandchildren. Since then, they have traveled to see us, but we were able to do international travel for four years after her diagnosis and travel in the US for an additional three years.

April 29, 2026May 25, 2026

More Happy Moments at Stage 7 Alzheimer’s

At this late stage of Kate’s Alzheimer’s, I am mindful that our Happy Moments may decline. Thus far, however, we continue to experience them. Yesterday, we had an especially good one.

Our caregiver had a meeting with her agency at the same time we normally go downstairs to the café for ice cream, so Kate and I went by ourselves. Prior to leaving, she wasn’t in one of her cheerful moments and wasn’t talking. I keep a variety of things on the coffee table in our living area that the caregivers and I often read to her.

I picked up a three-ring binder where I have collected a lot of different things about our lives together. I read her something I had written about our dating, falling in love, and getting married. As I read, she began to perk up. By the time we left for the café, she was smiling. While we were at the café, we had an special Happy Moment. We were alone most of the time. She was very relaxed, and we had a conversation that lasted almost an hour.

I didn’t take the attached video yesterday. I took it ten days ago, but it gives you an idea of what our conversations are like at this stage of her Alzheimer’s. The fact that I can’t understand her doesn’t keep me from loving these moments. I treasure them.

April 23, 2026May 25, 2026

Music as Therapy

As I implied in my previous post, at first, music was just a form of entertainment for us, but within the first year, it became therapeutic as well. Kate had a panic attack when I rushed her while we were getting ready for a symphony concert. I tried to calm her, but she was still uneasy when we left home.

After we got in the car, I put on a CD of the Brahms Violin Concerto. I advanced it to the Second Movement which is very soothing and lasts about ten minutes. Before we arrived at the concert, she was just fine. Since then, we have had a number of other occasions like this.

One of those occurred after she woke up from an afternoon nap. She was disturbed about something. As I had done before, I tried to calm her, but that didn’t work. Then I started singing a children’s song, and she joined me. That encouraged me to take my phone out of my pocket and search for children’s songs. I downloaded an album with one hundred of them. We sang for another thirty minutes which left us with a happy ending.

Music has been a very helpful tool in my “Caregivers Toolbox”. Once in a while, she still has similar episodes, usually during the night. I have found that “Edelweiss” from The Sound of Music works well. I start out by humming or singing. Then I pick up my phone and play it on my audio system.

There are also times when she just seems to need a boost. Sometimes I use the album of children’s songs mentioned above. Another one I depend on is an album by the Susquehanna Chorale, a choral group we heard one summer at Chautauqua. It has a number of songs that we both enjoy, “Shenandoah”, “Danny Boy”, “Loch Lomond”, “Swing Low Sweet Chariot”, and “Deep River”. We carry music wherever we go. One never knows when it might be needed.

April 7, 2026April 7, 2026

Kate’s Alzheimer’s Diagnosis and Our Thoughts About the Future

For months, I’ve reported on positive changes in Kate’s behavior. She is better now than she was two or three years ago. This doesn’t mean that we have found a way to cure Alzheimer’s, but even at Stage 7, we have found ways to live joyfully.

Occasionally, people ask me how we’ve been able to live so well. I’ve given that a lot of thought and would like to share those thoughts in several upcoming posts.

Today, I’ll focus on our immediate response to Kate’s diagnosis. It was January 21, 2011, exactly one week after she turned seventy. Although we had seen the first signs of dementia more than five years before, the reality of the diagnosis frightened us. Our marriage had been filled with joy, and we were afraid that Alzheimer’s would make that a thing of the past.

We went directly from the doctor’s office to Villa Tronco, a favorite restaurant of ours. We began a conversation that continued for several weeks, perhaps months. We had been caring for our four parents (and my dad’s girlfriend after my mother died) for twenty-two consecutive years. We were aware of the many challenges we were likely to face. Now, it was time to focus on our own future.

We spent much of our time discussing how each of us felt and the first steps we should take. We talked about when to tell our children and our friends. We considered the practical issues, such as legal and financial decisions.

We reflected on the things we had enjoyed during our marriage and wondered how long we could continue living so well. We had no idea but made a decision that worked then and now. We would just enjoy life and each other for as long as we could. I’ll have more to say about this in following posts.

March 4, 2026March 17, 2026

Six Consecutive Days With Especially “Happy Moments”

Kate has been improving steadily for more than two years. The basic symptoms of Alzheimer’s haven’t disappeared, but she’s more cheerful and talkative. Thus, we have more “Happy Moments” than in the past. She seems less like someone with Alzheimer’s than she did before.

That has been especially true, for the past six days. They have been remarkably good days. On each of these days, she has waked up with a smile and appeared to know me. During the rest of these days, she has smiled and talked a lot. The rest of the day has been similar. She seems less like someone with Alzheimer’s than she did before.

Monday was a good example. After lunch, I read The Velveteen Rabbit to her, something I hadn’t done in a while because she seemed to have lost interest or was less able to follow the story. This time,. That occurred after her bout with COVID. Yesterday she expressed her pleasure with facial and verbal expressions. She clearly understood and enjoyed what I read.

That was followed by an especially good time when we went out for ice cream that afternoon. The people who drop by regularly to see her smile and talk got what they were looking for. That doesn’t happen most of the time, and I’m wondering just how long this will go on. Right now, I’m enjoying every minute and feeling grateful.