Elevators and pills?

It is an odd conversation. Made more odd because it was quarter after six and I was in the middle emptying my old bladder for the second time that morning. Standing over the commode about halfway there, the door pops open and Cheryl looks at me for a moment then backs away and closes the door most of the way. I finished up and flushed the toilet.

As I came out of the bathroom, she asked me – you will have to show me how that works sometime. I replied – do you mean the toilet? No, she said. That elevator thing that you came out of. You will have to show me how to work it. Where does it go?

It just comes up from the pill area, I replied. Good! Can you get my pills for me? I’ll take them but I have to go first. She passed me and closed the door to the bathroom.

I got the morning meds from the kitchen. It was not too early. This was the day after the “fall back” idiosy that we have perpetrated on ourselves to get more golf daylight after work. Parkies have a problem with the shift. It is easier in the Autumn but it is still there.

The next day

It had been our usual (for these days) night. She headed to bed at 10PM after taking her night time meds. She laid for a while with an icepack on her head and eventually gave me the icepack to return to the freezer after several trips to the bathroom.

Over night she got up to go once or twice but returned to bed with out any confusing conversation until about 5AM. — some of this is fuzzy to me — She went into the bathroom for a bit and seemed to be having a conversation with someone. (Not unusual – she talks to the spiders before executing them.) She came back out and told me there was a woman in a pink bathrobe that needed to use the bathroom first. I got up and went into the bathroom and removed her pink bathrobe from the door where it was hanging into the closet and closed the door to the closet. I returned to the bathroom and said – she is done now. It is all yours.

She used the toilet, brushed her teeth and returned to bed. I asked about the teeth brushing and she said her mouth did not taste very good. Now her breath was minty fresh. I told her so and she replied with – I love you.

About two hours later at 7AM the incredibly loud and annoying alarm clock brightened itself and loudly pronounced – Time For Medicine! I got up to fetch her morning meds. She got up and went to the bathroom after I set her medicine on the bathroom counter and helped her out of bed which is another normal routine these days.

Afterward she did not come back to bed. Often we lay in bed until she starts to gently snore and I get up quietly as possible and let her nap for a bit or she gets up after about thirty minutes to return to the bathroom. This time she stayed up. I asked – are you coming back to bed? She replied – no, I think I will put some clothes on. I did not probe any further but should have done so.

I got up and fetched the paper, made coffee and settled into the chair I cannot decide about keeping. I turned on the TV to catch up with the boring political news of the day. This is election day. The TV news is like the pre-game show from hell. … it is a nice day outside but the lines are long at the polling places… reports the guy standing outside a poll in New York City down the street from a boarded up Macy’s. Cheryl came out of the bedroom dressed up to go to church or some other gathering requiring an upgraded look.

Do you know who is picking me up?, she asked. I replied – no one yet. You should have some cereal for breakfast. (I was hoping that she would wake up.) She ate a bowl of cereal.

Afterward she went back to the bathroom, I thought, for a second time. As she came back out she said again, I don’t know when they are picking me up. I replied that no one was picking her up to go anywhere. This, of course, did not register as she was convinced that someone was picking her up to go somewhere. When I asked for that detail – where she was going – she replied, I don’t know but they will when they pick me up. She remained agitated and got her keys and went out into the front hall. (I thought she was checking for mail at 8AM.)

She returned and said, there’s no one out there. Do you know when they are coming? I coaxed her over to her chair (The Chair) and got her to sit down. I moved the rocker over so I could sit and look straight at her. And then I explained again that she was probably dreaming when she heard someone tell her that she would get picked up soon to go (wherever). I repeated this message and the one that we where going to her exercise class at noon today and, oh by the way, this is pizza Tuesday. Some of that sunk in through the fog of confusion because she asked again. I’m not going anywhere? No, not yet I replied. To your fitness class around noon, I continued. I look pretty good don’t I, she said. Yes you do. You look very nice, I replied.

I brought her some tea. We watched some more of the pre-game election news madness. She remarked that her watch agreed with the clock on the mantle but the news person had reported a different time. I told her that we were watching a recorded program – a benefit of cable – and we were watching it on a delay of about forty minutes. Oh, she replied and I could tell she understood. She was slowly becoming present.

At 9:30 AM she announced she was going to put on jeans and rest for a bit. I took her the ten o’clock meds at ten. She went to the bathroom and returned to bed and slept for about thirty minutes.

… 11:09 AM — she is back! But tired. She ate some yogurt and drank a little 7-Up.

Changing time zones is one of the more moronic ideas of the twentieth century carried into the twenty-first. China has only one time zone. Think about it and look on a map.

Cyptoquips and Word Jumbles and Sudoku

Her favorite games in the newspaper are these. Even though she may have episodes of confusion, she still works these. They require both logical and expanded thinking – references to puns, etc.

Parkinson’s disease is puzzling and it sucks.