Tag Archives: Alzheimer’s planning

From Memoryland to Grandbabyland: Part One

Alzheimer's Family Issues, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , ,

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If I have been absent lately, I have a good excuse: My daughter gave birth to her first child, a baby boy she named after Ralph. BabyRalph is as adorable as every newborn—in other words his parents and grandparents find him an absolutely perfect specimen of infancy and expect everyone we send pictures to agree with us, whatever they really think.

The plan has always been that

1), Ralph and I would drive down to New Orleans once my daughter went into labor and stay for a few days after the birth before I drove Ralph home

2), I would then return to help out on and off as long as needed, having arranged plenty of back up help for him.

Needless to say I was nervous about both parts of the plan.

For one thing, Ralph was less than enthusiastic about going to New Orleans at all. He said babies scared him, and I believed him. He was always more a dog person that a small child person. While he was present as the births of our two kids, he is a proud member of the late sixties generation of macho activist guys that spouted feminism but didn’t actually live it. I’m sure he must have changed some diapers; I just don’t remember when.

As my daughter’s due date approached (and then passed), we all became more and more anxious. Ralph too. His concerns shifted from himself to the upcoming birth and all that could go wrong. He stopped worrying about his own travel. He started calling to check in on my daughter and son-in-law (Flyfisherman) nightly. When are we going down again? Do you know when she’s go into labor? became his new mantra, which he repeated throughout the day several times an hour. When the call finally came that labor had begun, he willingly got in the car, and he barely complained on the six-hour drive.

Once in New Orleans, things got a little trickier. Ralph does not like changing his routine and likes excitement even less. Fortunately the small AirBnB we rented had a little patio where he could smoke. Since labor was going slow and we were asked to stay away until BabyRalph’s actual arrival, Ralph stayed on that patio a lot while I picked up the other grandmother at the airport and BabyRalph’s twelve-year-old half-sister K from school. Fortunately Ralph also napped since we were not summoned to the hospital to meet BabyRalph until late that night.

On that first visit and again the next day, while Baby Ralph’s two grandmothers and an ecstatic K vied for turns to hold him in the little rocking chair the hospital provided, Ralph held back. He would not hold the baby and would only look at him from the small sofa across the room, not up close. The next day was the same until I sat on the sofa with the baby so someone could take a picture of the three of us together. Ralph looked at the baby. Ralph squinched closer. Ralph decided maybe, just maybe he’d try holding the baby.

Ralph took his namesake in his arms. Ralph began talking to BabyRalph. Ralph began singing Dylan songs to BabyRalph.  My daughter,  DaddysGirl, may have teared up a little. I might have too. We all snapped pictures of BabyRalph.Ralph held BabyRalph and held him some more, until it was time for a diaper change. It was a magical moment.

But it was only a moment. Ralph did not show interest in holding the baby again over the next two days before I drove him back to the farm where he greeted the dogs with great joy and relief.

Part One of the Plan was a success.

Part Two…. I’ll let you know soon enough.

MOWING A PATH INTO NEW TERRITORY

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

 

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Last week, at my request, my younger brother flew down from Pennsylvania and spent two full days on our John Deere tractor bush-hogging our fields.

That I had to ask my brother, or anyone, to come represents a turning point. Two years ago, already diagnosed, Ralph spent every day for months mowing the same fields to have them pristine for our daughter’s wedding. A year ago, he was still mowing regularly. But he has not driven the tractor since last spring. And over the summer the wheat/weed mixture grew higher than an elephant’s eye.

I asked during our last Emory Brain Center check up if Ralph should quit mowing, and was told mowing was fine. Although he has stopped driving most places out of fear of getting lost, his motor skills are fully operational.

Ralph’s problem was not ability, but motivation. About every two days we discussed the fields. I’d ask him if he was sure he was up to mowing. He’d say yes…yes but he was too tired or had a stomachache or it was too hot out or too chilly so he was planning on starting tomorrow. Then tomorrow would come and we’d have a similar discussion.

This is the pattern that the spouse part of me has had the most difficulty accepting. I was supposed to be the procrastinator in our relationship, at least in non-emotional areas. I was the one who put off unpleasant chores; Ralph was the one whose mantra was BE A CLOSER, who taught his kids by example to follow through and get the job done because he always did. Not anymore; each time a situation comes up, from helping to clear the dinner dishes to mowing the fields, I want to believe him when he agrees so pleasantly to do whatever I’ve asked. And then of course he never does and I become increasingly frustrated, mostly at myself for falling into the habit of depending on him.

As usual, over the last few weeks the reality slowly seeped into my brain that for whatever reason—because he simply forgets or lacks the energy or has unspoken anxiety about his ability to remember how—Ralph was never going to mow those fields.

And the only person I know with tractor skills is my youngest brother who has always shared with Ralph a love of machines—they spent a joyous summer over thirty years ago taking apart three elderly Triumphs to build two refurbished ones. But over the last thirty years the relationship between the two, once extremely close, became increasing problematic. In fact several years back tensions intensified to the point that the two of them got into a physical altercation during a family wedding.

Of course Ralph doesn’t remember the altercation and has only a vague recollection of there ever being any tension. And my brother has been more than happy to patch things up. He has visited several times recently while passing through. I called and asked if I could pay his way down to help. He agreed immediately.

I told Ralph my brother was stopping by on his way to a business meeting in Florida and suggested maybe we could Tom Sawyer him into helping out around the farm. Ralph thought that might be a good idea and was remarkably unsuspicious on the first morning when my brother voiced an interest in mowing. For the next day and a half my brother mowed and Ralph sat on the porch.

For the first few hours, my brother thought Ralph seemed pretty much as he remembered but that has time went on there were increasing signs of Ralph’s memory lapses and his less definable personality change from Get Things Done Man to Ho Hum Whatever Guy—when a tractor hose broke, Ralph’s response was ‘We’ll deal with it tomorrow’ until my brother reminded him that he was leaving tomorrow and needed to mow today. But the two of them hung out together and generally had a lovely time.

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“Boy those fields look great. Maybe we could get him to come back and mow a couple of times a year.” That’s Ralph talking not me. Over the last couple of days, he has made this suggestion a lot.

 

Does Ralph realize the mowing visit was a set up? I don’t know and am not sure I want to ask. We may have found our way into new don’t-ask-don’t-tell territory where we don’t acknowledge but accommodate ourselves to Ralph’s limitations while maintaining his dignity. Or perhaps I am kidding myself about his awareness.

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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