Tag Archives: Alzheimer’s mood changes

The Zest Deficit– Cognitive Impairment is More Than a Loss of Memory

Caregiver/Spouse Issues, , , , , , ,

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I spent last weekend in NYC, visiting my son and old friends, going to restaurants and museums, carrying on lively conversations about politics, art and philosophy. I came home five pounds heavier but energized, reminded that there was a world out there and I was part of it.

I almost added to the above paragraph, “Also guilty” because that has usually been the companion feeling when I enjoy myself without Ralph. But I am not sure I did/do feel guilty. Pre-Alzheimer’s spectrum Ralph would have wanted to share that energy, would have been jealous that I was getting to have experiences without him, would have missed me, would have made me feel guilty. Ralph as the person he is now does not feel as if he’s missing anything when I go out into the world without him. He is thoroughly content to sit in his “office” or in his porch rocker or at the kitchen table as long as his dogs, his cigarettes and either his beer or coffee are nearby. When I walk in the door, he is glad to see me but more interested in returning to his chair or to bed.

Still having been gone a few days having fun, I wanted to offer a nice meal to Ralph last night. I asked if he’d like anything special for dinner. I am a pretty good cook, and Ralph used to have very definite ideas of what he liked to eat and very large appetite. Eating was always one of the bedrocks of our relationship. We shared an enthusiasm for trying out the newest, most cutting edge restaurants in any city we visited. For choosing the most exotic and/or spiciest choices on any menu. And for experimenting at home with made up recipes.

“Whatever is easiest,” Ralph said last night, as he has said every time I’ve asked lately.

No suggestion I made could draw any enthusiasm. So I threw some leftovers together and was done with it.

We woke this morning to a beautiful fall day. Dry but not too dry, a few clouds in the blue sky, a slight wind ruffling branches still full of green leaves, the temperature in the temperate 70s. The perfect day for a walk.

I asked Ralph if he’d like to take one with me.

“Not really.” He wasn’t being mean. He just wasn’t interested.

Ralph used to walk every day. I was the lazy one he had to drag along.

Along with a loss in memory has come what I can only call a loss for the zest Ralph used to take in life’s small pleasures. Yes, witnessing this change makes me sad, but I have to acknowledge that Ralph is not sad. He is content. I am the one who feels discontent. When I throw a slapdash dinner together or skip a walk for lack of a human companion—and I do both with more regularity than I like to admit—I feel that I am letting myself be diminished, or more honestly, am diminishing myself. It scares me how easy I find it to sink into the featherbed of sloth. Am I using Ralph as an excuse or is Ralph’s condition wearing me down? I’m not sure, but the fact is that my new normal is the color gray. (In fact, I actually found myself thinking last night that I wanted to reupholster the living room chair in gray fabric.)

The New York weekend reminded me that highs are still out there to experience. Of course, so are lows. For Ralph, he’s found peace in passivity as his world shrinks. I have to decide whether I let my world shrink too.

Meanwhile, I think I’ll take that walk with Lola the dog now.

2 Conversations With Ralph–one bittersweet, the other just bitter

Alzheimer's Spouse Issue, Uncategorized, , , , , ,

 

When the kids were small, I always knew our best conversations happened in the car.dialogue.jpgStrapped in seatbelts the kids tended to open up more about their lives; now Ralph does the same. We were driving home from a visit to his dermatologist when he brought up an issue that has clearly been bothering him.

“My IQ score has dropped,” he announced out of the blue. “Is that normal?”

“How do you know that?”

“I saw it on my chart last visit.”

I don’t know how he saw this nugget of information (or even if he read it right), let alone remembered, but I realize that problems  he cannot sort out seem to get stuck in his brain, like gum on the bottom on his shoe that he can’t shake off.

“Well memory probably affects IQ results.”

“117 is still above average though right?”

“Right.” My heart ached with protective affection.

…xxx…

On the other hand, Ralph and I have always had our worst conversations at night when we are tired and Ralph has had some drinks.

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So last night while I was trying to relax after a long day by watching mindless TV at the kitchen table, Ralph stormed out of the bedroom.

“What was the name of that real estate agent who tricked you into selling too cheap?”

I told him the names of the agents we used, one a friend of his. He grumbled some more and went back to bed, only to return moments later and begin to rant about how we were cheated and I should have known better.

He was talking about some property we sold in 2013, the year he got his diagnosis and was still half running things. He had chosen the agent and begun the negotiations pre-diagnosis; I had completed the deal post-diagnosis. Ralph and I had discussed the terms exhaustively. I didn’t want to sell the building at the time but he insisted.

Those months were among the worst in my life, a time I’d rather not remember myself, filled with my mother’s precipitously failing health, Ralph’s heightened, often angry anxiety over his diagnosis, our desperation to sell our business profitably, the sharp learning curve I had to master while laid up in a cast after I crushed my ankle falling on black ice. I did not necessarily make stellar business decisions, but frankly I handled it all pretty damn well considering.

In Ralph’s head last night, we had sold the property just weeks ago and he was obviously obsessing over the numbers (which he had wrong). As he began to berate me, I pretended to be absorbed in Saturday Night Live. In fact I was stewing in resentment and in memories of Ralph during the middle years of our marriage when I often felt he bullied me.

Then he switched gears.

“Where’s our money now? Who are those people who supposedly manage our investments? How do you know they are not going to take our money? You need to make sure they can’t steal our money.”

What I felt as he ranted was about as far from protective affection as you can get—hot white hate tinged with damp self-pity that I was stuck with him until one of us died.

This morning Ralph brought me coffee in bed, as sweet as could be. The conversation has erased itself from his brain as if it never occurred. I wish I could say the same, but I can’t.

 …xxx…

 

*A side note: as we were entering the examining room, the nurse behind the desk said to another nearby, “The Alzheimer’s patient is here now.” I clearly heard and am sure Ralph did too, but neither of us brought it up, not even in the car.

 

Moment of Reflection: Where We are On Our Alzheimer’s Journey

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Last week I had the opportunity to speak on a panel about caregiving in to a group of nurses and nursing students at Emory University in a conversation titled Lived Experiences in Coping. The other two members of the panel, the wife of a man with Parkinson’s and a woman who has MS, were actually nurses themselves so I was a bit intimidated at first, but I think I held my own (although I fear I went beyond my 15 minute time limit). And it was a fascinating morning as we shared perspectives and answered questions from the professionals who asked over and over what they could do to improve the care experience.

As valuable as the meeting was, what was most useful to me was the preparation. In the invitation to speak I was asked to discuss how we arrive at Ralph’s diagnosis, and how the news and illness trajectory have affected my and Ralph’s lives.

Not surprising questions or ones I haven’t thought about in the past, but ones I have avoided thinking about for a while. I used to take stock regularly to keep perspective, but lately it’s been easier (i.e. less scary or anxiety producing) just to rock along day by day without considering the long picture and the implication Being asked to talk at a symposium forced me into that area of necessary discomfort.

So what I jotted down:

Diagnosis came in 2013. Before that I didn’t want to think his memory problem was serious in part because his failing memory coincided with a personality change I liked. In fact I realize that for those few pre-diagnosis years we were in a SECOND HONEYMOON—he was less angry than he had been as a younger man and a sweetness emerged that he had not shown before. If he was secretly stressed, I didn’t choose to notice.

Then for maybe six months before the diagnosis, Ralph went from forgetful to what I found at the time annoyingly inattentive. I thought he wasn’t paying attention when I had to repeat things over and over. And he was often argumentative at night, so we went to bed angry at each other, but while I’d wake up still angry, he’d wake up denying there’d been any friction the night before. But still we were closer than we’d been for years.

Then his memory tripped him up more obviously—I have written about the fishing trip that made him realize something might really be wrong because he couldn’t keep up with the other guys—and he saw our family doctor who sent us for tests. Ralph and I were convinced he had Lyme’s disease.

Between taking the tests and learning the results we went from honeymoon to LIMBO. In real time I am only talking about a month or two from test to first diagnosis and another three months until we saw Dr. Lah at Emory’s Brain Clinic. But the period felt much longer—one of those crucial moments in time that stretches as if time has slowed down to allow for the heavy significance. We didn’t know much about Alzheimer’s. We were both anxious. Neither of us knew exactly what to expect but we were talking about it A LOT. I remember a car trip, six hours talking away, feeling oddly close as we faced an uncertain future together, both of nervous but open and oddly upbeat. The ride was actually kind of fun.

Then we got the diagnosis and went from Limbo to PURGATORY. One day he was one person, the next he was someone else. Not that his condition changed, but one it was NAMED, it was much more scary. Suddenly he was terribly, terribly anxious and suddenly I felt the need to limit plans, to take over his business (and close it), to act as a buffer between Ralph and all the people who didn’t know he had an actual condition that was causing him to act certain ways. Purgatory lasted for a long while. He seemed to slip dramatically and then, once he began his drug regimen, he regained some ground, only to slip a little more over time. His memory did not get worse—it was already terrible in the first tests—but slowly other aspects of the Alzheimer’s spectrum showed up, like passivity, lack of time awareness, loss of sense of direction, withdrawal from the world, and a general malaise along with the frankly beneficial loss of memory of all arguments and disagreements as he embraces those with whom he had fallings out. My symptoms as caregiver also showed up—greater impatience and loneliness balanced by a kind of desperate energy and new to me gregariousness as well as moments of patience I didn’t think I could manage.

For a while now, we have been on a PLATEAU. Ralph has been holding steady more or less. Some days he’s more with it than others. But I can’t really see much difference from week to week.

The big difference is in expectations. It’s not that I have bad ones. Or not exactly. I have none at all. The rule of thumb is that Alzheimer’s progresses, but the rate is so varied that I have no clue how it will progress in our case, what route it will take or how long. But I do know that when we move from this plateau, the next stage will not be good.