Ralph usually has his annual cognitive check-up in July, but not this year. Because of Covid we have yet even to meet with our new neurologist.  After several rescheduling, our telemed introductory appointment is now set for the end of August and obviously won’t include intensive testing (at least I hope not—Ralph testing by phone would be a nightmare; zoom is going to be challenge enough).

Gauging where Ralph sits on the continuum these days is not easy. Between his hospital stay and slow recuperation, the long preparation for our relocation, the actual move one day before Louisiana went into quarantine, our new home/life under Covid, and Ralph’s anxiety in adjusting, not to mention my own, I have lost perspective. 

Last year’s check-up was uneventful, so uneventful that I wrote no more than a sentence about it in my journal. I had been concerned that Ralph seemed a little fuzzier in daily interactions but he scored pretty close to what he’d scored the previous years. We were assured he was maintaining a steady but unusually slow progression.

By then I was already house-hunting, and our practitioners felt we were moving at exactly the right time, with Ralph was still able to adapt and adjust to a new place.  I remember discussing that I should teach him the route to the nearest stores and coffee shop, then make sure he carried good, explanatory ID and introduce him to storekeepers and others in the neighborhood so they’d know his situation in case he got lost on a cigarette run. 

Fat chance. In the five months since we moved here, Ralph has taken one brief walk with me three blocks around the corner and back. Cigarette runs are unnecessary because he has forgotten smoking all together, thank goodness, and he has absolutely zero interest in leaving our porch. He has been to dinner at my daughter’s house once, seen his internist once and been to a hospital lab for blood tests once. Otherwise he has been in the house. We did spend a week away with my daughter’s family at a house with a pool to escape the heat, making no stops on the way and never leaving the house once we arrived saw how few others were wearing masks; Ralph enjoyed watching the rest of us splash around though he didn’t dip a toe in the pool himself, preferring to follow his usual routine of wake, eat, nap, eat, nap eat, bed.

But does his increased inactivity mean anything under the circumstances. He seems to function fairly well as long as he sticks to his rote routine, which is not that different than it used to be. The big change is swapping in BoyRalph visits for cigarettes, a clearly positive change. 

The less positive changes are all in the gray, hard to decipher margins.

He has never returned to a life list. He had been getting sloppy about following it and then he was so out of it during his recuperation from the blood infection, and so helpless.  Now I don’t trust him to mark thinks off. Or remember where the list is Or maybe the truth is that I find it easier to give him his pills myself, to tell him to shower, to track his meals that I would to nag him about the list plus the actual behaviors it tracks. He can still make a sandwich for himself at lunch but often asks me moments later if he’s eaten yet. I’ve also taken over feeding his dogs, a minor chore he used to like but never thinks about now. I worry that I’m coddling him, but then I try to stretch his world by asking him to do a minor chore like takeout the recycling and he gets slightly but noticeably befuddled.

He hasn’t paid attention to the world for a while, but now he seems to have lost his visual acuity a certain ability to react and judge. I’ve been filling bookcases the last few days and he doesn’t notice the difference between objects arranged on a shelf or placed there helter-skelter to get out of the way. In some ways those shelves are like his thought process, a random organization of discrete thoughts. He doesn’t always button his shirt correctly–true, neither do I on occasion, but then I am mortified; he could care less. 

But I need to take into account that everyone’s memory is worse these days. Everyone is a little depressed and a little disconnected.  A little spacier than usual. A little sloppier. Where does Covid Brain stop and Dementia begin? 

Thinking about that way, I tell myself that nothing I’m describing here about Ralph sounds that much worse than a year ago. But it is worse. I just can’t articulate or even pinpoint the deeper shift–a letting go, a deterioration. Not only of remembering but in comprehending. Conversation is gone which is sad. More depressing, so is my trust in his reasoning, in his ability to care for himself, to think clearly. Less than a year ago, I was able to leave him with his life list for days at a time. Now I am afraid to leave him alone in the house for more than an hour or two.  I’m afraid that is a marker more important than any test.