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Home from Edinburgh

We got back from Edinburgh Tuesday night, 6/1. We had a great trip. It was just what I had wanted it to be. Being with Kate 24 hours a day for 10 days gave me a better opportunity to see how she is doing. The only thing worth commenting on is that it reinforced my awareness that her short-term memory is poor. She often forgot things I would have told her only a few minutes earlier.

I continue to notice that she gets a lot of things wrong. For example, she told me a movie started at 6:00 last evening. We got there just before that time and discovered that it started at 5:30. Another example: we have tickets to a play at a local theater for tonight. She had it on her calendar for tomorrow night. These are mistakes that any of us might make; it is just that she makes them regularly. It means that you can never trust that what she says is correct.

One other thing to report is that I saw a movie on the return flight from Amsterdam entitled 1776 Stories of Me and My Wife. It is about a Sci-Fi writer whose wife has cancer. He decides to write one story a day for her as a way of boosting her spirits. His feeling for his wife hit so close to home that I was wiping tears from my eyes for the last 30-45 minutes of the movie.

I also had trouble sleeping one night in Edinburgh and found myself thinking about Kate’s AD and her impending decline.

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Difficulty with Medications and Losing Things

Yesterday morning as I was leaving for church, I noticed Kate sitting on the bed looking just a bit sad. I asked if she was all right. At first she said fine and then she said that she had had trouble putting her pills in the pillbox for the coming week. I know she was seeing that as another sign of her AD. This followed her losing some clippers in the yard. She went to Lowe’s on Saturday and bought several new clippers as well as several pairs of gloves.

Later in the day she mentioned that she had been unable to find her debit card which has been missing 2-3 weeks. We drove her car to lunch and looked around the front seats and found it. I said, “I know you feel better about not having to go to the bank and tell them you needed a replacement.” She said it was not that so much as the personal feeling of knowing she had lost it.

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Missing Hair Appointments and Other Things

This past Thursday, Kate had a bad day. I had realized it in the afternoon sometime when we spoke on the phone but didn’t know what was wrong. When I got home from seeing Dad, she was lying down on the bed with the TV on. She didn’t want to talk at first and I backed off. Ultimately, she, of her own volition, told me that she thought her hairdresser “knows.”

I seem to recall that she had missed an appointment on Tuesday and this was a rescheduled appointment on Thursday. Instead of seeming to be annoyed, they were very understanding and kind. When she left, they said something like, “We love you.” Over the past few years, they have become accustomed to her missing a fair number of appointments. She suspects that they are just now putting it together. She was down only that day and evening. She seemed fine the next day.

In the meantime, she continues to show signs of forgetfulness. This most commonly involves the misplacing of something – her phone or something else. I am facing this from 2 sides , Kate and Dad. He is regularly “losing” something at his nursing facility. Typically he can’t find his phone. That happened over the weekend, but he found it in his top drawer. Yesterday when I started to put his bridge in his mouth before dinner, it was missing. I decided the dentist had come by and taken it to make an adjustment since I had left a message for this yesterday morning. As it turned out, Doris, who washed Dad’s clothes yesterday, found his bridge in one of his pants pockets. On the way to dinner last night, Kate told me that was the good news. The bad news was that she can’t find it. She looked all over. This morning she called Doris who told her she was sitting in a chair in the bedroom when she had given her the bridge. Kate went to the chair and looked all around it and found it on the floor.

Just as typical are the issues with the computer. She can’t seem to understand and recall how she downloads books from the computer to her Nano. I feel confident other things are happening with the family album she is working on. It is bound to be taking her longer to complete it because of this.

We are having lunch together today and going out to a benefit tonight. I try to keep us as active as possible and we have been more active since the diagnosis. In the next 10 days or so before we leave for Scotland, we have several events. I like to think this is good for her.

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Attempting to Live Normally

It is now almost 3 ½ months since Kate’s diagnosis. There isn’t much to report since the last post. We are both moving into a period that I would describe as “normal” except that we can’t forget, and we make references to AD more and with more personal meaning than in the past. I find myself avoiding mentioning anything about other people with AD. For example, in SS this past Sunday, Pam was clapping as we sang Happy Anniversary for one of the couples in the class. She seemed to be enjoying herself so. Normally she doesn’t say anything, but is so sweet and gives everyone a hug when they greet her. I shy away from telling Kate because I don’t want her to dwell on her future condition. However, she sees enough on her own that I can’t prevent such experiences entirely.

She continues to work on the family album. It is so hard for her to remember how to import pictures and where she has stored them on her computer. She gets awfully frustrated.

I was out of town last week, and she got along just fine. I had been concerned about leaving her as we both have noted her increasing dependence on me. I sometimes feel caught in a conflict between wanting her to be as independent as she can be and wanting to help her as much as I can.

The movement into a normal period is illustrated by the fact that she dropped yoga after her one-month trial. She originally said she would go back, but I am beginning to wonder. She is working in the yard which makes her feel good both physically and psychologically. Perhaps when the album is done, she will try yoga again.

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Cleaning and Organizing

This morning I noticed that Kate was up and could see through the sliding glass doors from my view in the kitchen that she was working on the top drawer of her end table. I went in to say hello since she is rarely up that early (about 7:15). She was cleaning out and organizing her top drawer. The only reason I point this out is that for several months she has been trying to put more order in her life. She has worked on cleaning out closets and drawers, etc. I suspect this is a reaction to her feeling of a loss of control over things. She missed a meeting yesterday morning with a PEO. Kate had written it down for today instead – something she has done frequently over the past few years.

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Everyday Life

Nothing too eventful has taken place since my last posting with respect to Kate’s AD. She did call me yesterday to tell me that she had missed another hair appointment. This has occurred a number of times over the years even as recently as a few weeks ago. She gave me the time of the new appointment and asked me to keep tabs on her hair appointments. She will, of course, do so herself, but I will be her backup in the same way that I am for her medicine.

As we were headed to dinner last night, she told me that she had encountered a problem on her Facebook page. When I tried to explain what might have happened she got frustrated and said she wouldn’t understand it anyway. I understand, but at each moment when she brings up something like this, I forget and proceed with an answer that she can’t understand. I trust I will get better with time.

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Another Instance of Getting Lost

I ended quickly on the last entry because Kate called and said she was in the parking lot and didn’t feel like coming in at the time. As planned in the earlier conversation, we went to Casa Bella. We had our usual veal piccata along with amaretto cheese cake for dessert. For extra measure I decided to try their pistachio gelato which was good but not nearly as good as the cheesecake.

It turns out that Kate got lost as I has suspected. She drove around a long time and finally called the hostess for her meeting that she wasn’t coming. She was clearly frustrated, and I am sure, though she didn’t say so, that she attributed the problem as related to her Alzheimer’s. I commented over lunch that we know that she is geographically-challenged and that we can work harder to relieve any frustrations in that area. I also noted the conversation we had had with her behavioral psychologist commented on how well she does with the verbal area and that that is something that will work in her favor going forward since so much of day-in-day-out social activity relies on such skills. I also said that she might put greater emphasis on making scrapbooks and albums for the grandchildren as this is something she enjoys and that the grandchildren will appreciate in later years.

Having time at lunch in a place that has been special to us was just the right thing. Not surprisingly, she had thought of suggesting Casa Bella herself. She was quite calm during lunch and left for home relaxed and ready to tackle the family album that she and her brother Ken have worked on for the past 4-5 months. During Ken and Virginia’s visit to Knoxville this past week, Ken and Kate were able to make a good bit of headway. It now looks like they are into the final editing. I think they are both beginning to see the end. My guess is that they may let it go sometime in the next 2-3 weeks.

Because of their visit, I haven’t written anything about our visit to talk with Lillian Walters, the social worker at Kate’s physician’s office. The visit went well. Nothing of special note came out of it. We did not schedule another visit but Kate said she would prefer to call when she felt the need. Kate later told me she was glad I had gone with her although nothing occurred that makes me think it is good for me to be there. She began by asking Kate how she was doing, and Kate hesitantly said she had her ups and downs. This surprised me because I would have said she has done remarkably well. At the same time I recognize there are times of frustration that occur. We talked with Lillian about her irritability. She suggested that Kate give herself permission to excuse herself for some of this and to organize her life to minimize frustration. We talked about my doing more things and how Kate feels about that. One thing in particular was taking over the checking accounts. Kate said that was fine with her.

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A Phone Call for Comfort

Just got a call from Kate. I had missed a call from her about 30 minutes ago. I sent her a text and asked if she were all right. Thus her call. I asked where she is, and she said she was headed back home. Then she asked where I was and what I was doing for lunch. I told her I was lunching with her. She asked where she could meet me. I said, “How about Casa Bella?” She said, “That would be great.” I asked her to stop by the office and we could go together.

She was obviously distressed. I fear that she either got lost on the way to the meeting or she did something embarrassing at the meeting.

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Forgetfulness

Last night Kate and I went to a movie at our local arts theater, Olympia. When we got home she started to put Dad’s clothes in the washer. Then she discovered that the washer had clothes in it. She had turned the washer off when we left for the movie. I saw her do it but thought she was setting the washer for washing Dad’s clothes upon our return. She couldn’t imagine why she had turned the washer off. She said, “I don’t know what’s happening to me.” This is another indication that she is getting back to looking at life normally and not thinking about AD all the time.

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Adjusting

I just realized this morning that it was 2 months ago on Monday that we got the news of Kate’s diagnosis. The fact that I hadn’t specifically realized it when I wrote my thoughts on Monday underscores the fact that we are making the adjustment.