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More Frustrations

Late yesterday afternoon Kate was working on her laptop trying to send online Christmas cards to a couple of friends. Like everyone who uses a computer she encountered some problems that were not a function of her own action but others that clearly were. The first was discovering that her subscription to Jacquie Lawson had expired. She didn’t know what to do; so I signed her up for another two years. I assumed that she is unlikely to be doing such things after that. If she is, we can sign up for another year or two.

The big problems she encountered were of her own making. First, she was trying to enter the recipient’s email address in a space where she should sign into her account. There was also a place to enter a password. She never realized she had made this mistake, and I did not tell her. I feel that would only depress her. The second problem involved where and how to enter the recipient’s email address and to send it. She must have worked 15 minutes trying to get Ellen Seacrest’s information entered correctly. During this time she was very frustrated. After she had sent the message, she wanted to send another card. It was like starting over. She hadn’t remembered anything about how she had done the first one. I had helped a good bit on the first one; so that partially accounts for this. She was really trying to do this by herself. After a long period of time, she gave up. She said she wasn’]t going to work on it until tomorrow and that she had reached a point at which she wanted me to help her.

This was the highest level of frustration I have seen in quite a while. It comes at a time when she is trying so hard to be independent. Earlier in the day we had been talking about my diving in too quickly to do things for her. She told me she knows I mean well, but that she feels like a child when I try to do so much for her. This topic is becoming a frequent one for us.

Today I received an email from someone with a link to a New York Times article on Alzheimer’‘s. In that article I learned of a documentary on Glen Campbell. It apparently follows him during his last musical tour (150 performances, I believe). He was diagnosed in 2011, the same year as Kate. I noticed in the article that he is now in institutional care and that during his tour he displayed behavior that I have not witnessed in Kate at all. This makes me feel that we are truly fortunate that Kate and I have had so much time to enjoy ourselves and that we still have time ahead. At the same time, stories like those of Glen Campbell make me wonder if I am blind to how little time we may have left. Right now, I believe that Kate’s decline will continue to be gradual and, perhaps, punctuated by periodic drops downward. Based on the past four years, I have a hard time believing that next summer she will be dramatically different than she is today. I hope I am correct.

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Problems with Bank Cards

For months I have been keeping Kate’s debit card and her driver’s license. That has led to a couple of problems lately when she went out to lunch with Ellen and another friend and didn’t have money to pay. They paid and I paid them back.

To avoid this situation, I just put Kate’s cards on her dresser so that she would have money when she goes to lunch tomorrow with Ellen. She was a little irritated and asked if we couldn’t just keep the cards on the table next to her side of the bed. I said that would be all right if she would make sure they stayed there. She looked at me seriously and said, “why wouldn’t I?” I told her we would talk about it later. She really could not imagine why? This is something that concerns me because it suggests she is less cognizant of her condition than she has been in the past.

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Funny Things Happening in the Brain

Last night after we got back from taking Heather to the Nashville airport to catch her plane to Lubbock, we sat around and caught up on things we hadn’t been able to do during her visit. Kate asked me if I wanted an “Alzheimer’s Update.” I said that I did. She then told me that her brain had been doing funny things. She couldn’t recall much of the specifics but was able to tell me that it involved seeing places she had been in the distant past. One example she was able to recall was seeing herself going down the stairs into the family room at our first house in Knoxville. She said she was well aware that she wasn’t actually there or actually seeing it but that she would just have a flash of some past memory. We don’t know but tend to think this is in some way connected to Alzheimer’s. I suspect we may learn quite a few other things that we haven’t known before.

She also said she was adapting and thought she was getting along pretty well. She seemed to speak comfortably about it last night although we did not take much time, and I didn’t ask a lot of questions that usually annoy her because it is hard for her to answer. My dad has similar experiences.

I tend to think she is doing well except when she is under pressure to handle some task. The mother’s family album was one of those things. She is trying to finish up two PEO scholarship applications that are due this Friday. She has indicated any number of times that she is just about finished, but she continues working. I have worked with her a little and can see that she doesn’t follow instructions well. That seems to be particular important when you are completing an application online. She has been quite frustrated which bothers me. I want to help and have done a little, but she really wants to do it herself. I hope that she does not do this next year. This is simply too much.