Unselfish Care

And Tonight We had to Go Home

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Sometimes I can convince her that we have come home and we have not left the house.

On other days and nights that is impossible. No night is the same. On this night we had to go home.

I gently got her in the car. I was proud of the fact that I did not get upset. As we drove around the block about 2 mile per hour below the speed limit – the ride is longer that way – I kept up some chatter about various things. Some stories about upcoming events on our calendar.

As we drove in front of our regular Pizza Tuesday spot, she told me about being there last Friday with Paul.

As I turned the corner to climb the hill, I asked her if she knew the way from here. I got no response. As we got to the top of the hill and she began to recognize some land marks she said, “I live on the other side of all that.” (She was headed home in her mind.)

As we got close to our driveway entrance I said, “It’s good to be home. Isn’t it?” she responded, “Yes, it is. I’m tired.”

Dementia, Capgras and Parkinson were in full cooperation this night.

I fear that this little drive around the block reset ploy will not always work. That makes me anxious.

Maybe God will provide me with another plan.

Carpe Diem.

A New Idea – Restaurant(ing)

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A week and a half ago we stopped at an old Dixie Highway landmark called the Greyhound Tavern. We had passed it several times going to and fro when visiting her cousin Gerry in hospice. On our way home from our last visit with Gerry we stopped there at about prime gray hair eating time.

The reason was made up but we had a good time. Sherri had asked in conversation whether I thought the fried chicken at Greyhound Tavern was as good or better than the Purple Poulet where we had eaten a few weeks before. Well, everyone has their own personal likes and dislikes about comfort food. Cheryl’s mother made fried chicken and we ate it cold on a picnic in June in 1969. It was delightful. My aunt Johanna made fried chicken along with a lot of other stuff for Sunday dinner at her farm in Indiana. It was delightful. Long ago we had the KFC’s original recipe at the first place that Colonel Harland David Sanders opened in Corbin Kentucky. It has a little museum attached. It was delightful. (I have always liked original recipe.) But while I thought that the fried chicken at Greyhound was good, the chicken at the Purple Poulet was excellent.

While we were awaiting the arrival of our meal, we split the chicken since neither of us can eat half a chicken anymore, Cheryl said that we could visit various restaurants in Cincinnati and the surrounding area and eat lunch there. This is an excellent idea I replied. Let’s do it.

Today we did. Today’s choice was the Sweet Heart Cafe in Colerain township. We have been there before but it has been a year or so. There are actually about three stores operating out of this store front – a bakery, a cafe/diner, a clothing shop. It has a very unique ambiance and they make their own jams and preserves.

We brought home pie for dessert tonight or maybe the whole dinner.

A good list to start with.

Carpe – the diner – Diem.

It is February

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February is a melancholy month. Thinking back to childhood, it is the coldest month. In four weeks it will be March. March is the first happy month. The world is waking from winter.

February is like the early morning. The care partner gets up quietly so as to not disturb the early morning peace. He stretches and puts on a sweater. He makes coffee. He opens the shades to see the sunrise. (Shifting person lets me step outside of myself.)

Cheryl is sleeping late. Early in the day yesterday she was showing signs of her impostor delusion so I got her out of the condo.

She is upset with the passing of her cousin Gerry. Janet, Gerry’s sister, called yesterday to report the news of his passing. We talked on the phone for a little while. I put the phone on speaker so Cheryl could hear and participate. All of us reminisced for a bit. After Janet hung up, Cheryl got up to get dressed. In that interval she became the person in charge of Gerry’s celebration of life. She decided she needed to pack for the trip. I helped her for a bit.

On the fly I conjured a tour of the countryside. I was not sure of where other than simply out. I sent a big long text to her brothers and sisters so they would be aware of her mental state if she abruptly called them.

We visited her mother’s grave. We had talked of this for a couple weeks. She often loses the fact that her mother has passed away. I struggle with ways to gently help her understand that I cannot take her to see her mother. For a moment yesterday she seemed surprised to read her mother’s name on the stone. It broke my heart to realize that this is the thing she cannot remember, her mother’s death. Cheryl and her Mom were very close. Her dementia was at the very beginning about five years ago when her mother passed away. I suppose I did not realize at the time that she had shoved this knowledge into a place where it was not easily retrieved. Gerry’s stay in Hospice and our visits to see him bought back a flood of childhood memories.

The written world and its words are a jumble to her. She told me that Mom would stay here until she is cremated. I drove her to another part of the cemetery where our niche is located waiting for our cremains. I do not think she understood that she had become her mom in her thoughts.

I let that go. I decided I was trying to fix an impression that did not need correcting. Often in her conversation she is a child, her mother, my wife and mother to our children and occasionally I become Dan, David, Scott or, in the very early morning, Janice all within the same five minutes of conversation. She wondered aloud if the cemetery office would know where Gerry was to be buried. I replied that Gerry was going to be cremated per his request and his remains interred in the parish cemetery in Kentucky. Oh she replied.

I started a conversation about where to go for a walk when we left the graveyard. She said we could go to Mom’s house and then corrected herself to say, “where Mom used to live.” Internally I smiled. It seemed to me there was hope. It is February and we are in Ohio.

I suggested lunch first, so, we discussed various places nearby. We landed at one of Ohio’s claims to fame, Bob Evans’s Farm Restaurant. There are a bunch. One was close by and it was the one she would take her mom to occasionally. While waiting for our food we chatted about various topics. I sent a text to my son David and asked if he would be home in the afternoon. We had forgotten our pie plate and the carrier and I thought to retrieve it. He lives far enough from us that Cheryl would get a sense of “going home” from his house.

When we arrived at David’s house a neighbor’s garage was on fire. It was several yards and a street away but it added a certain amount of urgency to getting in David’s driveway and added a discussion of events totally unrelated to Gerry’s death. Melissa made fajitas for dinner.

It was a good outing. Cheryl was exhausted when we got home. Later this week I may probe her memory of her mother. (or not.) This was a long rambling story about a day that made me anxious about her mental state which seems to be deteriorating quickly some days and some days not.

On this morning, the day afterward, she did not open an eye until I awakened her at ten o’clock. She had not changed position from when I got her into bed at just before ten the previous evening. She did not stir when I came to bed an hour or so later. She did not stir overnight when I made my usual couple trips to the bathroom. It seems as though she sleeps more lately but sometime she is agitated about something in the evening and when I ask she is unable to vocalize her thoughts.

Dementia and Parkinson’s are miserable companion diseases. (And they both suck.)

Carpe Diem.

Water

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Dementia has many different aspects, one of which is belief that one has taken in liquid when one has not. Coupled with the anxiety about urinary incontinence and urinary tract infections, it is hard to convince her to drink enough liquid. Water alone is boring.

It is more and more apparent that dementia, memory loss and aphasia combine as a perfect storm to make it hard for her to tell me what she is feeling and what I can do to help.

Today we are caught between a UTI and anxiety about incontinence. The inability to move quickly to the toilet when needed is not providing any added benefit.

There must be some better way to deal with it all.

Carpe (dammit) Diem.

The Evenings are Hardest

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With all of the memory, confusion, delusion and dementia issues that have come up in our life with parkinson, evenings put me on high alert for hints about where she is mentally.

Last evening was particularly troublesome and at the same time interesting about where her mind was. For the previous couple days she occasionally would tell me how much she liked this”place” better than the other one. When I probed a little bit I discovered that she seemed to think that we were trying this condo out before we bought it. last night she asked if we were going home tonight or if we would wait until tomorrow. (Carpe Diem!) I told her that I did not want to drive all the way home tonight. I thought it would be better for me if we slept her and left in the morning. She agreed that it would be better to get a good night’s rest before driving back home.

A different discussion started about what to take with us and when to pack. I suggested that we wait until the morning because any dirty laundry I could easily pack in a garbage bag. I would not have to be neat about packing. She said, or you could wash it in the morning before we leave. I readily agreed. There were two or three story lines going at the same time. There were condos in two different places, here and at home. But we were going there tomorrow.

It became important to inform her sister Nancy that we were coming home tomorrow. I sent a text message to her sister informing her that she might get an odd phone call in a little bit and to just go with it.

Cheryl decided to water the plants so that they would be okay while we were gone for a week. (Nice, we were coming back.) I kept my mouth shut and helped to fill the little measuring cup we use to water the house plants. The story was still unfolding as the evening went on.

It looked as though Nancy was off the hook for the phone call and I informed her about it. Cheryl shifted gears and called her other sister Debbie. (Smiley face) I did not see that coming.

I helped her dial the phone to talk to Debbie and scrabbled to text Debbie about what was happening. I was not fast enough and opted to talk over the top of Cheryl to quickly explain the purpose of the call. Deb caught on quickly and smoothly adjusted the topic to their cousin who was in the hospital and probably soon moving to a close by hospice facility. They talked about that for awhile.

When she hung up I informed her that I had texted Nancy and told her that if Nancy needed more information about where we were or our other travel arrangements she could ask Deb. Cheryl replied that she had just talked to Deb and that would work. (Another smiley face) She did not remember that I was in the room while she was talking to Debbie.

I better call Anna and tell her too. When our daughter Anna answered I said over Cheryl, “Just go with it.” Anna did.

It was a busy hour and a half with phone calls and plant watering but all was well an hour or so later when we went to bed. She got up once to visit the bathroom and eventually got up for blueberry pan cakes and orange juice at about 9 AM.

NOVA was a repeat anyway.

Carpe sundowner Diem.

A great sunset picture from the LA Times.

Physical and Mental

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These two aspects of the Parkinson Dilemma are frustrating from a care partner viewpoint. They are the source of laments and weariness. The grind can be debilitating in many subtle and unsubtle ways.

Physical disability is only recognized by Cheryl when she is so physically tired that she cannot stand up. And even then she fights the thought that she physically cannot do something. That something might be as little as getting up out of the chair that I put her in because I was worried about her falling. There must be a balance somewhere. So I help anyway without trying to be a helicopter helper and hovering about her space.

Her mental ignorance of her ability to do something – rare is the occasion that she will ask for help – is simultaneously frustrating and heartwarming. She wants to do it. If she starts it and I complete it she feels like she did it. (Ugh!) Her memory does not allow her to remember that I completed whatever it was. So I help anyway without trying to be a helicopter helper and hovering about her space secure in the fact that she will not remember and assured that it is unimportant for me to correct her when she tells someone – see what I did. (except when she tells the doctor.) Tee Hee!

Seize the day and make something new if things are not going your way. Parkinson is a progressive dilemma and in Cheryl’s case there is an element of creeping apathy. The meah factor appears as she loses interest in doing things – exercise, writing birthday cards, visits with friends, laundry, making cookies, taking down the Christmas tree and decorations and other things. A little push every now and then never hurts. She will not remember that it was not her idea if you are subtle with your pushes.

Today we will visit a cousin of hers who is in the hospital. She is uninterested in exercise class. The hospital will be a long walk so we will switch activities today. And then as we left the little lunch place and headed toward the hospital my son called with a request to pick up our grandson after school. More driving but out in the world today. We will go to the hospital tomorrow.

This is an old picture but it is how I see this woman, the love of my life, the place I am home. I see that smile less and less but sometimes early in the morning it peeks out of her face.

Carpe Diem even if you cannot.

Pizza Tuesday

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An old tradition of ours is pizza Tuesday. I know. I know it is supposed to be taco Tuesday but neither of us are super huge fans of tacos. Although if we wind up at a Mexican restaurant and there are some very good ones in the Cincinnati area, Cheryl will order tacos. Some of the Hello Fresh meals are Latin American in flavors. Neither of us grew up with that but the La Rosa family has been in business for sometime and some scenes from the Rain Man use Pompellio’s as back drop. Sorry I have digressed again.

We used to frequent a small pizza joint nearby (run by a family of German dissent or Latvian if the spelling is different) that we liked. We tried several nights during the week and ultimately landed on Tuesday as the least crowded. It stuck. Over time it became “Anything Goes Pizza Tuesday” because sometimes one would rather have a hoagie or a hero sandwich or a calzone or maybe just a salad. Cheryl did not care as long as there was pepperoni somewhere. The only exception being a steak hoagie sandwich reminiscent of Pasquale’s. Sadly, the Pasquale’s of our childhood is no longer.

Lately we have moved Anything-Goes-Pizza-Tuesday to a newer use of an old italian restaurant near where we live. They opened just before the pandemonium and we supported them with carry out orders during the shutdown.

Pizza Tuesday has developed into a social affair with friends and neighbors. Sometimes Cheryl’s family shows up. Sometimes anything goes.

On this particular night Cheryl’s cousin Donna showed up. We had been trying to get together and on a whim I called her and invited her to Strong’s Brick Oven Pizzeria. She came. My cousin’s widow, Linda showed up. We had a great conversation. We got home later than we usually did. Sadly, we had no leftovers and that is too bad.

It was a time to connect and make new connections. The pizza Tuesday reminder list is getting longer. Cheryl had a good time and told stories.

Carpe pizza Tuesday Diem.

Ago

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When we were young Cheryl was a very good seamstress. She impressed me by making me and the boys a couple of shirts. I have no idea of the amount of work, effort and skill it takes to make other items of clothing but the year she made us custom fitting flannel shirts for Christmas I was super impressed. I still have a couple. The rest overtime I managed to wear out and fray most of them beyond repair. I can tell you that there is nothing, nothing better than a well tailored shirt. If you have ever had a shirt made for you, shirts off a rack are never the same again. Although I never owned one I can understand why men could spend thousands of dollars on a hand made suit. No wedgies in your armpits or elsewhere.

Today for whatever reason she has decided the pillows need to be trimmed differently.  Here we are in Joann Fabrics. It is hard for me to understand what she is thinking. She has a hard time expressing her thoughts. It is overwhelming like a lot things these days. I really do not know how to help her.

The plan that I conjured was to get outside before the inclement weather turned up. Maybe a walk even though it is cold the wind is still. And afterwards we can have some lunch somewhere. It is Sunday and we have no plans.

But she found her stash of earrings when she was putting her clothes on. I was in full on waiting mode in my little office hide away hoping to not get frustrated and jump in to speed her up. This is January in Ohio and it has been weirdly warm for a couple weeks and that usually means the crap is coming. I became anxious and went back to check. She was messing around with her earring stash. I reminded her we were going to take a walk and have a little lunch somewhere. Oh yeah, that’s right said she. She came out of the bedroom with a bunch of her earrings in a box to take to the jeweler for repair that they did not need. I pointed out that it was Sunday and her favorite jeweler is closed today. She said maybe we could go sometime this week and I readily agreed.

Let’s go take a walk and get lunch. Okay she said.

That all went out the window as we got into the car and she told me about Joann Fabrics and pillows and fringe and trim and once seam binding. Happily I knew what all of those were but had no idea why she was telling me or what she had in mind. I had a lot of questions. I reluctantly drove toward Joann Fabrics instead of our favorite park to walk in. Switching from earrings to pillows left me dumfungled.

I drove to Joann Fabrics and later after we had absorbed enough of the ambiance, we went to a close by Cracker Barrel for salads and pillow talk. This was a soft talking day and Cracker Barrel was a bad pick for quiet conversation but they did have a nice wood fire going near where we were seated.

Later when we got home she showed me the green pillow that she had been talking about. I think she made this waiting for one of our kids to get big enough to be born. I do not remember which one but this pillow has been in our household for several decades.

Carpe the sewing project Diem.

New Year’s Day

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We had a great visit from all the kids and many of the grandkids. On New Year’s Eve I spontaneously asked our children if they had anything special planned for New Year’s Day. I asked if not would they like to gather around our table for a meal in the afternoon. I suggested about 4-ish. They all said yes.

I stole this idea from Frank C. Church. Thank you, Frank for a spontaneously good time.

Who can tell? Maybe a new family tradition? Traditions have to start somewhere. They are kept up if everyone has a good time participating. Zachary certainly had a good time. He had not seen grandma’s marble race before so Mom and Gavin helped him put it together.

Most importantly Cheryl got to have everyone at her house. She smiled and laughed at the conversation and activity. It was simply wonderful to see her smile.

Her smile and laughter are less as we head on our journey of Parkinson. Yesterday was very special to her and to me.

Carpe Diem. And don’t forget to connect!

Easy Life with Grace

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It occurred to me this morning (early afternoon) as I was cleaning up the breakfast dishes that often we want our friends, lovers, significant others to be on our schedule. This is especially true if they rely on us for help. Cheryl has not been on my schedule for a long time. She is on parkie time.

Her dementia seems to have added a special aspect to her conception of time and place. Following instructions in a linear fashion is very hard for her to do. Even if you are not interested in doing what she has decided that she wants to do, it is simply easier to go along. It is actually able to steer the activity if you plan a little bit.

There are three things on Cheryl’s agenda for today; Christmas cards, snicker doodle cookies and a list of complaints for the doctor when we see him next week. For me it is merely laundry day. (But these are all things I will do in some part.)

I got up on my typical schedule at about 7:15 am or so. I figured out the Wordle but used up all of my guesses and got a “whew” for my effort. The morning news was not keeping my attention so I printed the address labels for the Christmas cards and placed them in a prominent spot on the dining room table. I made a boo-boo. More about this later.

At 9 am or so I finally encouraged Cheryl to get out of bed. She had gone to bed at 10 pm but I could hear her moving around while I was learning how to align the address information with the Avery labels that I had selected earlier in the day. I came to bed about 11:30 pm. She was up once after that.

Even though I was making every attempt I could think of without a direct command to get her interested in making the cookies, nothing happened. I gave in and finished the cookies.

The labels however was a businesslike activity and she selected that. All was well until she became confused. I had duplicated a page of the labels when I printed them. UGH! The silver-lining was that she recognized the error. She merely did not know how to react to it. (sad face here) In an earlier life she would have said, “Hey you duplicated a page we need to print the missing page.” (She might have added “dummy” as a tease.)

She discovered this just as I was leaving to take a walk and Cindy had come to sit with her. I took the offending page out of the rotation and suggested that she continue with the rest while I took my walk. While I was gone she just stopped. She was unable to continue. It did not occur to her that she could do the page of labels that was unduplicated. And my suggestion that she do that did not register in her mind.

Later in the afternoon I stayed nearby and repeatedly showed her what to do. She finished one more sheet of labels. We have only thirty to go. Last evening I wrote a small newsy letter to put inside of the cards. I had the cards and envelopes pre-printed with our names and return address.

It is becoming a long and disappointing road.

Carpe Diem.