Yesterday was Hallucination day! I try to schedule very little for Monday. When I was still working it was one of those days that it was unnecessary to plan. Monday usually awoke with a bang and set the tone for the rest of the week. These days it is merely “wash the bed linens” day.

Yesterday which was Monday also was Hallucination Day. Cheryl’s little girls visited for most of the day. They were vividly apparent to her. She talked to them while she was working on organizing her stuff.

I had taken her medication to her in her office on Sunday evening. She was talking to her cousin and spilled the water on a couple of address books that she uses to organize the birthday card activity. A disaster occurred when the books got wet. Yesterday I got the hair drier out and showed her how to use it to dry the pages. She spent a couple hours and an enjoyable conversation with – she said – Virginia. It seemed harmless so I went with the flow. I worry about the eventual outcome.

An aspect of this is that I am able to get her to come back from who she sees by talking to her directly and getting her to tell me who or what she sees. At least she doe not see visions of horror. A drug she took about three years ago caused horrific visions especially at night.

These days she sees her sister Janice and our granddaughter Virginia mostly. Yesterday she saw her Dad, Mom and my mother. She had a long conversation with my mom on the back porch as she swept some twigs and dirt off it that was left by some storms that passed over during the past weeks. When I asked her to come in to eat dinner she asked if my mother was eating with us. Pointing out that Mom was dead dissipated the vision.

The hallucinations are activity related. She talks to Virginia when she is doing arts and crafts. Janice shows up at night when she is sleeping or awake to go to the bathroom. Her mother seems to appear when she is thinking about and working on the card list. It seems like she occasionally mistakes me for her dad when I am working on some household project. Our sons come and go at random in her reality. She often thinks our youngest is here when we are getting ready to eat.

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Every now and then the whole confusion and got to get organized thing adds together with the memory thing to make life miserable for a few minutes or hours while I try to locate an important something for Cheryl. Today it was a couple of checks that her friends who are not internet savvy gave to her to donate to her sunflower fund raiser. She put them in a special place while I was not paying attention. Just when things are going smooth and the road looks straight a tire blows out and the vehicle veers off into a ditch.

It is much easier when I can see where she stashed (whatever) in the Special Place. The checks were discovered inside an old envelope from our nephew Stephen that was used to mail a thank you card to his grandmother now deceased. I suppose the envelope was kept because it had a current address for Stephen at the time. Why it was not recorded and then pitched is beyond this humble person’s understanding. Why it is in our house ten years later is less so.

Caregiver Anger — Damn this disease! In her confusion she found this envelope parked where Jill and Michael’s envelope had been parked for weeks. (The Special Place).

It would be so much better if she was merely slow and stiff. I say this without meanness. If this was merely a physical disability. It might be easier for me personally to deal with but I am merely speculating. The mental difficulties come and go. They go less so of late. Mentally she is still young and agile. In the present she is older and fragile.

I worry about her falling and then she tells me she can not find something. I help her to find it and she is sorry to have brought an extra task to me so she puts herself in precarious positions to help look for it.

It is a repetitive story.

Carpe Diem.