Tag Archives: Alzheimer’s caregiving

Taking Stock For Future Reference

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In preparation for Ralph taking part in testing of the new Merck anti-plague drug, our nurse at the Emory Brain Center  asked me to make a list for the nurse to show Ralph’s current baseline. Of course, I put it off (just as I often put off writing here because it means facing stuff I may not feel like facing). But now  the list is done and it seems worth sharing.

WHAT RALPH CONTINUES TO DO:

Make small repairs around the house when asked; Pick vegetables and do light farmwork when asked; Take his meds on his own from his filled weekly pillbox; Make his own cold breakfast and lunch; Make coffee as needed; Use the microwave; Buy beer at the convenience store; Feed the dogs daily; Drive around the farm in his truck to “walk” the dogs; Dress, bathe, shave etc on his own; Talk on the phone at length to his sister and oldest son; Attend his art class; Walk occasionally on a farm path circuit; Watch nightly news and Jeopardy over dinner; Listen to NPR on the radio; Read quality full length books of fiction and non-fiction; Use his credit card (as long as no tips are involved); Pay cash for small purchases; Cut his own hair ; Turn on the gas grill and change the gas canister when needed; Interact socially with people who visit or whom we visit; Fish from a dock; Clean fish he catches; Share stories from his childhood; Offer witty one-liners out of the blue; Analyze a situation/problem presented to him and show insight even though he forgets his analysis (and the problem) shortly afterwards

WHAT RALPH CAN’T DO ANYMORE:

Pay attention to business or financial matters—important since his professional life was all about real estate investing and managing; Use the stove; Use the grill although he does turn it on when I ask; Drive on his own except those places noted above or under duress and if I am there to give him directions; Use his boat; Hunt ; Go to movies—says he finds them “boring”; Watch narrative television dramas or comedies except on rare occasions; Listen to music on his own; Keep up with or show interest in family and friend activities; Remember details of relationship history with friends

 

WHAT RALPH MAY OR MAY NOT DO:

He may still be able to play guitar, but shows no interest; He says he can drive tractor (and was told it would be ok by Stephanie) but avoids doing so.; While he goes to art class, his output has greatly diminished; he spends most of his “painting” time sitting in his office smoking and listening to talk radio; He claims to take walks but I have not witnessed him walking

 

RALPH’S TEMPERAMENT CHANGES:

Extremely passive—used to be extremely assertive; Never gets angry—used to be hot tempered; Without curiosity—used to be extremely curious and factually knowledgeable ; Emotionally totally focused on his dogs; Less outgoing but more jolly most of the time.  

I kind of love having this information down in black and white and red and blue and green.  In a year or two or five, I will look back at what I recorded–whether with relief that the Merck pill has worked to keep Ralph at his current activity level or in bittersweet nostalgia for this time when the Can Dos on Ralph’s list are several lines  longer than the Can’t Dos and Maybes list combined. May it stay this way for as long as possible.

 

The Business of Remembering…A Sense of Time and Identity

Alzheimer's and Relatives, Caregiver/Spouse Issues, , , , , , , , ,

“The business of remembering what you did that day, or what you might want to do the next, I think, is essential for creating an overview of your life – that overview is what fuels plan-making and that ties in deeply with identity.”

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In case you missed it, this comment was made about my last post by  Jabberwalk, who writes with great insight and honesty at her own site Caregiving in the Forest.I can’t stop mulling over the implications.

Time is the trickiest part of life for Ralph. Almost the first thing he asks each morning is what day of the week it is. Sometimes he remembers what he did or parts of what he did yesterday, sometimes he doesn’t. Often he misremembers. He doesn’t like the confusion his lousy short-term memory breeds, but he lives with it by asking for a rehash over and over hoping for clarity that seldom comes.

We all fear the loss of short-term memory, but the problem of future memory is in some ways more troubling. When Ralph looks forward to what comes next, what he seems to see is an anxiety-producing obstacle course. Since he can’t hold on to the facts of place and time, he becomes increasingly anxious each time he asks again Where? but mostly When? The issue for me becomes how much information does he need, how much is a burden.

Not only do I make the scheduling decisions, but I also end up structuring what he thinks about that schedule, and therefore what he thinks about period. In other words, I am taking away or at least shrinking his overview.

His sense of identity has certainly shrunk. Yes, he is an increasingly passionate dog lover because dogs demand so little and remember on their own. And he remains a husband, not an equal partner perhaps but genuinely grateful to his wife for filling in the blanks. He is still a father too, although his memory of the kids’ childhoods is sketchy and he keeps up less and less with their adult lives because he finds tracking the details so difficult. He was glad to let go of his professional identity and hand me that responsibility early on. While he can be charming in social encounters, his interest in friendship and being a friend is limited by his difficulty remembering who people are, their names of course but more importantly, their connection to him. While still capable of moments of remarkable perception, he is no longer interested in being an intellectual or armchair philosopher because it requires remembering a train of thought.

I remember lots of trains of thought. I carry around layers of overview based on the different roles I play—wife, writer, friend, woman, businessperson, spiritual seeker, reader, political thinker, mother (Note that caregiver is not on this quickly written list—a Freudian slip I just noticed myself).

These roles operate within and are influenced by the various ways I frame my time. There is the constant background hum of long-term, generalized plans still under construction (i.e. How much longer until we need to downsize? What are my options if/when needs professional care?). More immediately, there is the weekly erasable-board calendar that Ralph and I live by day-to-day; there is the monthly wall calendar as well as the one on my phone. And there is the semi-conscious minute-by-minute and hourly tracking most of us fold into our routine (unless we are on the Alzheimer’s continuum and struggle to remember whether we ate lunch already) without much conscious thought.

But what has always been almost second nature, like making coffee as soon as I get up in the morning, is getting more difficult. Lately I have trouble both keeping my plans organized and keeping a hold on my sense of self within those plans, largely because of the important role-identity I just caught myself forgetting to include above. Caregiver, leads to another identity: AliceasRalph.

Keeping Ralph’s life organized and reminding him what he is doing on a given day means I also remind him why and how he feels, which means I make an effort to get into his head to understand his mindset. Thus is born AliceasRalph, who often ends up as confused as he is by his confusion about whatever I am trying to explain. Our weirdly opaque discussions can sound like the old WHO’S ON FIRST comedy routine.

Ralph’s overview of his life, if not lost entirely, is definitely tangled. And because I am both Alice and AliceasRalph, my overview is pretty tangled too. Not hopelessly, but moving forward requires vigilance as I ceaselessly work to untangle the delicate filaments without breaking them.

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What Is Normal Anyway?

Caregiver/Spouse Issues, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

people_in_the_park_204264 Is this the couple  Ralph and I are becoming? Jaunty hats and sensible shoes? Would it be so bad if we were them? Don’t they  look  happy and normal? But what is normal?

As I look at the life Ralph and I share now, I can’t help wondering.

When he was first diagnosed with relatively advanced Mild Cognitive Impairment, Ralph was in his mid-sixties and considered young to be jumping on the Alzheimer’s escalator. Now he is approaching 70 and those  symptoms—fogginess, lack of energy, loss of short-term memory, disengagement—that seemed so out of keeping with our peers a few years ago fall more comfortably into the gray area called “the aging process.”

And after all aging  is normal and even desirable  (the alternative being death) although it hits us each differently. For example, I called Ralph’s oldest friend the other day; the two have drifted out of touch over the years but Ralph still talks affectionately about Jim and I thought reconnecting  and reminiscing would be nice for them both to do while Ralph still can. Jim was excited at the prospect of re-connecting with Ralph but we couldn’t actually talk until  he put in his special hearing aid for phone use.

In that moment it occurred to me as it has before that while Ralph remains on his plateau of not-quite-Alzheimer’s-yet, his issues are not radically different from other men his age, at least according to what I hear from the women my age who live with them. So many of my friends complain that their husbands are slowing down faster than they are, that they no longer want to travel, that they’re becoming stay-at-homes, that they are more passive than they used to be, that they need to be cared for, that they require a lot of patience.

And we women have our own issues, or at least I do. The sleep issue—never more than six hours and often less, with the resulting sense of dull tiredness and desire for an afternoon nap. A nap for God’s sake! Ugh. The driving issue—is my driving getting worse or am I just more nervous? The concentration issue—much harder to turn off the wifi and buckle down (although maybe this problem will go away after election day). And of course the fashion issue—not that I ever dressed fashionably or learned to use make up but nowI either look as if I’m trying too hard or not hard enough.

The thing is, I still do feel younger, still want to fight aging, while Ralph has embraced it. Our day-to-day life has fallen into a frankly pretty comfortable pattern set largely by Ralph’s needs and wants. The pattern scares me because I find it enticingly easy to fill so much time dealing with minutia concerning managing Ralph’s care, our finances and our household, especially since my social life has actually expanded as Ralph’s has contracted. If this is this my new normal, it is not all bad? But I worry, where is my zest for the intellectual and creative ambitions that have always defined me before?

In a weird way I am almost heartened personally by the current election season in which two of my peers slug it out with vigorous, and in one case even brutal, energy (although I’m not saying their “normal” is the one I want). I want to believe I can still find that kind of passion and energy in myself. But maybe not, and maybe that’s okay.

Sorting out what is normal under my circumstances, or what is normal under any individual’s individual circumstances, is not easy, but it is where I find myself.

(PS. Last nightI asked Ralph, as I always do, if he’d talked to anyone during the day. He said no. I checked his phone. There was Jim’s number at the top of received calls; evidently they’d talked for over half an hour.)

My Car Is My Caregiver

Alzheimer's Spouse Issue, Caregiver/Spouse Issues, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

 

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Dear Red Prius,

My first car was a bright blue sedan that I drove to Atlanta when I was 22. I don’t remember the brand, only that I hated how visible it made me, especially since I was not the best driver.

I traded the blue bomber in for a used telephone “van” that had been refurbished by Ralph—his first entrepreneurial venture was buying and fixing  up used phone trucks, then selling them to counterculture types like me; the streets of Midtown Atlanta were full of Ralph’s trucks in the early 1970s.

The brakes went out on my van a week after I bought it. I was rounding a curve and ended up down an embankment. Fortunately I wasn’t hurt. Naturally Ralph felt terrible. He helped me fix the van and sell it.

(Actually, Ralph disputes my car history, says I got the blue bomber after the truck disaster, and he may be right. In any case I don’t remember what I drove next.)

We got married five years later, and for the next multiple decades I drove a series of practical, second-hand sedans (with baby seats), SUVs (for carpools and horse-trailering), and (once the kids were gone) compacts. They were all non-descript, aside from the dents I added, and I could care less.

A year and half ago, though, I got you,  Red Prius. I bought you for practical reasons like gas mileage and comfort, etc., and I admit that I chose your red color because you were cheaper than the silvery blue model.

The irony is that these days what I love most about you is your color. It makes you  So Visible, so easy to spot among the sea of tans, blacks, grays and whites on every road and in every parking lot.

I often find myself writing here about the difficulties, the frustrations, the borderline depression care-giving causes me. I think one of my secret worst fears is that my memory is going too. I said this to a friend recently and she laughed, “But Ralph isn’t contagious.”

Maybe not, yet I often feel as if my brain is clogged with the details of thinking for two. An adage of care-giving is that if we are tense or irritable, our cognitively impaired spouses (or parents) sense and react in kind. The flip side is that I am vulnerable to catching Ralph’s anxiety, and when I’m anxious my brain does not function at its best.

Lately I have an urge to simplify: the less I have to worry about the better. Less stuff means less stuff to keep organized and clean without Ralph’s help. Fewer commitments mean fewer complications to arrange for Ralph. But I also want to stay active and involved. Simplification can be a slippery slope that I don’t want to begin sliding down too fast.

Red Prius, you have been a godsend. It takes one item off my overloaded mental table—no more walking out of the supermarket or doctor’s office or bank or lawyer’s meeting or movie theater or restaurant or political meeting worried where I parked. One glance each way or a click of my key button and there you are, Red Prius, brightly reminding me that I am in control, at least to the best of my ability…A small comfort maybe, but it’s the small comforts that count.

So thanks for making my life better Red Prius. I promise to take care of you as well as I take care of Ralph.

Gratefully,

Alice

 

RALPH LOVES TO TALK BUT… PHONE COMMUNICATION WITH THE KIDS

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PHONE

The big issues connected to Alzheimer’s and dementia are almost too hard for me to grasp at this point despite the never-ending stream of factual information pouring off the internet and in the media. It is the small moments that capture what it means to live with memory loss.  For instance:

When I get home in a grumpy mood after driving my daughter through rush hour traffic to catch a plane, Ralph is in his usual spot, the front porch rocking chair, with cell phone to his ear. I head inside without stopping to ask whom he’s talking to.

After all, Ralph has his regulars: one loyal friend who checks in weekly, his sister, and the oldest of our three kids.

He talks to his sister almost every day. Both have a lot of time on their hands. Often they can talk for over an hour. Whenever I ask what they talk about, Ralph shrugs. “Small talk.”

He talks to our oldest son almost every day. If Ralph is laughing, but again, I assume it’s Josh, but again when I ask what they’ve been talking about, Ralph says “Small Talk.”

Our much younger two kids love their dad but they are of the text not talk generation. Their phone conversation with their dad are fewer and farther between.

So I was surprised when Ralph came inside and said he’d been talking to our younger son Jacob.

Surprised and pleased until Ralph added, “I called him but he didn’t seem to want to talk. It was a short conversation. I don’t think he likes me. Was I a bad father?”

This is no excuse, but I was hot and tired when I answered with the truth. “Not exactly but not always very nice. You weren’t very supportive.”

Ralph gave me a heartbreaking hangdog smile. “I wish you hadn’t told me.”

“But you asked.” (I know, I know, I could kick myself.)

“You should have lied.”

By then I was already desperately texting with Jacob: Dad said he called but you didn’t seem to want to talk. / Really??? It didn’t seem that way to me but ok / I made it worse because I said he was kind of mean / LOL

Jacob immediately texted Ralph saying he hoped he didn’t sound “out of it” but he’d just  come in after riding his new bike home from work. Evidently they had talked at length about the bike during their not hour-long but not short conversation.

Of course, then I had to figure out to get Ralph to find the text since he never checks for texts on his fliptop unsmart phone.

I waited about twenty minutes, said my phone was dead, asked him to check his because I was expecting a message from our daughter to let us know if she made her flight. He said he didn’t know how. We looked together.

“No message from her, but look there’s one from Jacob,” I said casually and read it to him out loud.

“Why would he send that?”

“I don’t know. Didn’t you talk today.”

“Maybe so. I don’t remember. But this was nice of him.”

Guilt, angst, manipulation, all for nothing maybe. Or maybe not. Ralph went to bed smiling.