Just got a call from Kate. We had talked about 20 minutes ago about meeting at noon at Applebee’s for lunch. She was calling to ask if I had said 12:30. Again, this is an example of a mistake that anyone could make.
More Signs of Confusion
Yesterday Kate misplaced the money I had put out for our housekeeper. I have no idea where it is. I’m sure it will turn up sometime.
She also put dirty dishes in dishwasher with clean ones after my telling her they were clean. This incident could really happen to anyone, but I am more prone to link it to AD since her diagnosis.
Are We Imagining, or Is She Getting Worse?
Yesterday Kate and I both recognized signs of confusion and inability to do everyday things. She couldn’t find her shirt that was on the back of a chair in the kitchen, she couldn’t find the power cord for the computer, she couldn’t handle some minor printing issues. At one point she said, “We know I’m getting worse.” I tried to comfort her, but there are aspects of this that I know are so personal that I am unable to relieve her burden only ease it.
Being Directionally-Challenged is Worse for a Person with AD
We are in Jamestown, NY, having flown here (Buffalo then car to Jamestown) for our annual trip to Chautauqua. We will meet one of Kate’s PEO sisters who lived in Knoxville for a number of years. I thought of a couple of things. First, I did not mention that on Thursday of this week (7/28/2011), I was at lunch with someone from our church when I received a call from Kate. She was lost. She was in the car and had intended to drive to a neighbor’s house which is just around the corner from our house, but she didn’t remember exactly where it was. She wasn’t far from home or our neighbor’s house when she called. She seemed in a panic. She was able to tell me the street she was on. She followed my directions and got there. Later I learned that she was the first to arrive which relieved her.
Kate is directionally-challenged; so it is not surprising that she could get lost; however, since she was just going a very short distance to a location near where we have lived for 25 years, I take this as another indication of her AD.
I don’t know that I have commented on this before, but we have gone through numerous such experiences over the past couple of years. On one occasion she missed a PEO meeting she was going to because she traveled around so long she was embarrassed to show up. She just called to say that she could not make it.
I should also mention that Kate has been working on a one-page flyer to mail out to PEOs in the Knoxville area inviting them to a book chat with an author. She has had this essentially finished since Monday or Tuesday but has had to make some edits based on suggestions from a sister PEO. The point is that this is a small task, but it has taken her an inordinate amount of time because of simple mistakes. She has indicated losing a number of things that I think are text boxes. I know that the problems she has had with the family album she is working on with her brother are largely a function of problems like this. She doesn’t remember how to do things, how to correct things, and generally digs herself in deeper as she works. It is like 2 steps forward and 1 step backward which makes her very frustrated.
An Everyday Mistake
I just got an email from Kate and here is another illustration of confusion. At lunch she said she had to get money for our housekeeper who had said we owed her for last week and this week. When she went to Doris to pay her, she found that she had misunderstood Doris. We had already paid her for last week before we left for Edinburgh.
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.
