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Happy Moments Keep Coming

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Over the past week, Kate has had more Happy Moments than usual. This goes along with the gradual improvement that began 2-3 years ago. Saturday was an especially Happy Day. She was cheerful most of the day and into the evening. When she was having her afternoon ice cream, the two residents who drop by almost every day came by to catch a smile. They hit the jackpot. She not only smiled, but she also talked and laughed with them. At one point, one of them said, “What are you laughing at?” Kate quickly and clearly said, “At you!”

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Improving at Stage 7 Alzheimer’s. Can it be?

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Like many other people, I’ve often thought the progression of Alzheimer’s involves the loss of one ability after another, and there is truth to that. Fifteen years ago, Kate was driving, active on her computer, and tending to her plants at our house for hours each day. Today, she can’t walk, bathe, dress herself, or talk in a way that we can understand.

What is amazing is that she has improved in important ways over the past two to three years. She is happier now and although mornings are her most difficult time of the day, she often awakes in a cheerful mood.

I frequently talk about her “Happy Moments”. These are moments when she is cheerful and often accompanies that by talking. I use the term “moments” because her mood comes and goes throughout the day. She shifts between Happy Moments and what I call “Neutral Moments”. That is the way she is much of the time; however, during the past week, she has experienced more Happy Moments than usual.

One of those occurred on Labor Day morning. She was smiling when I first noticed that she was awake. After giving her morning medications, she began to talk. I got into bed with her to take advantage of the moment. She said, “It’s good to see you.” That may not seem special, but it is for someone who doesn’t speak at all most of the time, and when she does, you can’t understand her.

She continued to be cheerful off and on throughout the entire day. We went for ice cream that afternoon. As I was about to put the ice cream on the table, she said, “That’s mine.” It was Labor Day, and a few minutes later, I said, “It’s so quiet today. They don’t have many activities going on.” Kate immediately gave a startled look that meant “Really?” Responses like this let us know that she follows and understands much of what I and others say.

Moments like these make it clear to me that all is not lost with Alzheimer’s, not even during the late stages. She is still able to connect with people, and it appears that she enjoys it. I think there are a number of reasons for her improvement. I’ll save that for another post, but I hope that our experience might be encouraging to other families with a loved one who has dementia. I am sure that Kate isn’t the only one who could improve at this point in the disease.

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My Favorite Part of the Day

I’ve often noted that mornings are the most challenging part of the day for Kate. That is a time when she smiles and talks less than she does later in the day. Although that continues to be the case, she does smile and talk a little more in the morning than she has in years.

Having said this, the late afternoon and evening remain the times she is more comfortable and at ease, which leads to more smiling and talking. My favorite time of the day is after the caregiver leaves at 7:00. Our primary responsibilities are over, and we can relax together.

Not always, but very often, we spend our time talking while watching music videos on YouTube . It is our conversations that I enjoy the most. They are quite different from our pre-Alzheimer’s conversations. The disease and especially the loss of normal speech make it difficult to understand what she is saying.

What is important to me is that she is relaxed. She is eager to talk. She is happy. She is also more comfortable talking with me than most people she encounters during the day. That tells me that our relationship is still special for her, just as it is for me, and that means the world to me.

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Happy Moments with Family

In some ways, being Kate’s caregiver is like being a parent. That’s the case when we are around other people. She is often cheerful, and her paid caregivers and I get to see that every day. I want other people to see that as well.

That is especially true for our children. Both of them live out of state and visit us three or four times a year. I send them videos regularly. That gives them a pretty good idea of what I call “Happy Moments”, but they don’t always see the best of her when they are here.

Our son and his wife were with us for four days this week, and Kate rose to the occasion. Each day, she was at her best, smiling and talking. She made all of us smile, and she closed their visit with a surprise Wednesday morning just before they left.

Please permit me to digress a moment. People often ask me if Kate recognizes the children when they visit. I tell them it’s difficult to be sure. She is comfortable with them, but I haven’t seen many clear signs that make me sure that she remembers their names or that they are her children. I may think differently in the future. That’s because of a Happy Moment that occurred as they were about to leave.

It was shortly after 8:00am when our son, his wife, and I went into the bedroom to see if she might be awake. She usually sleeps later than that and even when she is awake, she doesn’t often begin the day with a smile. Thus, I was doubtful that she would give us any response. I was wrong.

Our son leaned down with his face close to hers and began talking to her. She immediately responded with her beautiful smile that continued as he spoke. She was still smiling as we left the room. It was a touching moment.

I know I can’t be sure that she knew she was smiling at her son, but it looked like that to me. That’s what I believe, and I know it was a “Happy Moment” for our son, his wife, and me.

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My Best Source of Stress Relief

Because there are greater demands placed on me during this late stage of Kate’s Alzheimer’s, I experience more stress now than at earlier stages. The good news is that Kate is my greatest source of stress relief. I cannot say enough good things about her.

She is happy. That isn’t obvious every moment of the day, but she displays her happiness numerous times daily with her smile. She often smiles in her sleep. Sometimes she talks when she is apparently dreaming. These conversations (at least her part) are usually cheerful, and she sometimes laughs during them.

Our conversations are most important to me. They occur mostly in the evening after the caregiver leaves, but we also have them at other times of the day. These two occurred after I returned home from lunch on Saturday afternoon.

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Our Anniversary Celebration

To celebrate our anniversary last night, I arranged for a wheelchair-accessible van and took Kate out to dinner at a restaurant where we had shared many special moments since the early seventies.

Alzheimer’s makes it impossible to predict how she will respond in situations like that, but she rose to the occasion. Her best times are in the late afternoon, and she was smiling before we left. She was cheerful throughout the dinner and after returning home.

Her most difficult times are in the morning, but lately she has been waking up with a big smile. That happened this morning. It looks like another nice day for us. I wish the same for you.  

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Our 62nd Anniversary

Happy Anniversary to my wife, Kate. After all of these years, I can’t imagine finding a better match. Our marriage has been the adventure of a lifetime. It really began shortly after our first date on December 19, 1961, when I was in need of money and took a job as an ambulance driver at a funeral home.

Our whole courtship centered around my responsibilities at the funeral home. I worked four nights a week, which handicapped my time for dating. On slow nights, I invited her to the funeral home where we spent the evening in one of the unoccupied viewing rooms.

Periodically, I had to go out of town to pick up a body. She would go with me, and I was on the company expense account. We always found a good steakhouse before picking up the body and driving back home.

At the time, neither of us thought much about this. We were in love, and that was all that mattered. Of course, the most challenging adventure of all has been “Living with Alzheimer’s”. Thankfully, we have lived joyfully despite those challenges. Our love for each other has been a powerful source of strength for both of us, and I am optimistic that our love will sustain us for the remainder of our journey together.

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Our Relationship at Stage 7 Alzheimer’s

Our lives have changed significantly since Kate’s diagnosis fourteen years ago. Our world was much larger then. Now, it’s very small. Over time, she has lost almost all of the abilities she used to have.

For the past four and a half years, she has required total care. Her caregivers and I get her in and out of bed with a lift. We bathe her. We dress her. We feed her.

For ten years, we binged on movies, musical and theatrical performances, and ate out for all of our noon and evening meals. Today, the big events of our day are going for ice cream at 3:30 and having dinner at 4:30. We get her to bed at 6:30 p.m just before the caregiver leaves.

These changes have had a dramatic effect on our relationship. More often than not, she doesn’t seem to know who I am in the morning. That is balanced by other moments during the day and evening when she expresses her feelings for me in various ways. Since she has aphasia, she depends heavily on her facial expressions to communicate those feelings.

She often gives me a smile that I am confident communicates her love. That occurs most often when I return home from lunch and meetings with friends or organizations with which I am a member.

My favorite part of the day is our evenings after the caregiver leaves. We watch music videos on YouTube, and I recount many of the things we have done together during our marriage. We hold hands. She strokes my arm. She rarely says, “I love you”, but sometimes she takes my hand and lifts it to her lips and kisses it several times.

Sometimes she is talkative. One night last week, we talked for almost an hour. I love these conversations. Even though I only understand a few words sprinkled among the gibberish, the conversations seem very natural, and it is clear that love still binds us together. I am grateful.

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“All Is Well That Ends Well”

Thanks to everyone for your kind words of encouragement as I faced a minor bump in the road with the norovirus. I discovered one good thing about the virus: It is short-lived, often lasting only 3-4 days. In my case, it was 3 days. I know of several other people for whom it lasted only 2 days.

More importantly, Kate has shown no signs of catching it. I still have my fingers crossed, but it looks like she may have escaped.

As I said in my previous post, we all encounter surprises that require our immediate attention away from other things that are more important to us. In my case, Kate has always been my primary concern, and I am grateful that, as of today, she remains happy and safe.

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One Fine Day

I often mention the “Happy Moments” that Kate and I share. I chose that expression to convey that these are not continuous experiences; however, we are fortunate that they occur every day. Some days we have more happy moments than other days. Once in a while, we have a day filled with them. We had one of those the other day.

Kate began the day in a cheerful mood. She smiled, and she talked. It was one of those mornings when I got in bed with her, and we talked with music playing in the background. I love moments like this because they seem like we are connecting the way we did before Alzheimer’s, even though she can’t recall past events or speak in a way that I can understand.                                                                                                                                                                                                  

Later, she talked and laughed as the caregiver and I got her ready for the day. That’s saying a lot because she doesn’t like being rolled to one side and then the other in order to get her dressed.

She remained in this mood for the balance of the day until we turned the lights out that night.

Like so many things, I can’t explain what brought this about. I only know that it was “One Fine Day”. The days since then haven’t been quite the same, but they have been days of more Happy Moments than usual. Moments like this won’t last forever, but we will enjoy and cherish them whenever they occur.