Tag Archives: MCI

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

 

What’s Up with Namenda?

daily life with MCI/Alzheimer's, , , , , , , , ,

Medicine is not my forte. Ralph was the one who always followed a strict regimen of vitamins and minerals. I can’t tell you how many bottles of women’s vitamins ended up half-used before I threw them out. I can’t even remember to take my calcium chews, even though they are chocolate flavored (well, a wan shadow of chocolate flavor). So I am not the best person to be in charge of someone else taking medicine. But I am now the filler of Ralph’s seven-day prescription reminder box.

Sixteen months ago, when Ralph was first diagnosed, our doctor prescribed donepezil, the generic name for the drug many newly diagnosed MCI or early Alzheimer’s patients take—the most common brand name is Aricep. No one claims donepezil cures Alzheimer’s, and the many studies on its efficacy seem inconclusive about whether it actually slows down the symptoms. But as soon as Ralph started on the drug, his symptoms stopped getting worse. And although this is not always the case for donepezil, he had no side effects.

About eight months ago, we added Namenda to Ralph’s routine. Namenda, which is the brand name for the generic memantine, complicated our schedule because it had to be taken twice a day. That second pill was hard to remember, for Ralph and me both. But again there were no side effects, and as much as he says he hates taking pills, Ralph felt the combination of Namenda, donepezil and escitalopram, brand name Lexipro—which his psychiatrist prescribed to help Ralph’s mood—was beneficial

About six months ago, a new once-a-day version of Namenda suddenly became available. Although our doctor said the drug company was manipulating the market because Namenda’s patent was running out, we were thrilled. One set of pills a day made life so much easier. I still was the one who filled the pill boxes, but Ralph became a champ at remembering to take his pills, and I got out of the habit of reminding him.

Until last week.

When I contacted our on-line pharmacy for refills, I was told there was a manufacturer’s supply problem. No renewal of once-a-day Namenda for at least a month or two, maybe longer. I called the local chain drug store; Ralph will not let me order his drugs from our independent pharmacy where the pharmacist knows him. No once-a-day Namenda was available there either but they had plenty of twice-a-day. I called the doctor’s office; the nurse said other patients had been calling with the same problem and she would check into the situation. Two days later she called back and said to go back to twice-a-day.

Bummer.

I ordered the pills, filled the boxes and told Ralph we were back to twice a day. That was Wednesday. Thursday he took all three A.M. pills but forgot the P.M.. Namenda and was asleep by the time I noticed. Yesterday, I had to leave the house early and he forgot his A.M. doses, but did take his P.M. Namenda. Today I handed him his A.M. pills with his morning coffee. And as soon as I post here, I am going downstairs to remind him, it’s time for the P.M. Namenda.

We’ll get the new/old routine down eventually but I would love to know what’s behind the sudden shortage and why we’re being held hostage by the pharmaceuticals.

Between MCI And Alzheimer’s–Treading In Place But For How Long

daily life with MCI/Alzheimer's, Tracking Changes, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Funny how one sentence can pack such a wallop. The other day I received a flattering comment from Alzheimer’s Wife who writes an elegant blog about caring for her husband with advancing Alzheimer’s. I am pleased that she like my post of course. But all I can focus on and what I keep re-reading is the second half of her sentence, “and this really brings home my life about four or five years ago.”

Will I be living Alzheimer Wife’s far from easy life in four or five years? The scary thought I mostly try to avoid bubbles up. I have read her excellent, low-keyed but insightful blog about dealing with her husband’s advancing Alzheimer’s without quite connecting it to my life with Ralph.

I don’t want to worry about what is coming. I prefer the strange complacency of MCI Purgatory where Ralph and I carry on perfectly reasonable conversations (that we sometimes repeat word for word three or four times in less than an hour), and where Ralph functions responsibly within the parameters of his (increasingly restricted) routine. Where the doctors’ warnings about what lies down the road for Ralph don’t quite resonate as long as Ralph’s tests scores hold steady, even if holding steady means treading water with the help of Namenda and Donepezil.

In MCI Purgatory I can choose not to notice small, undefined changes: how after a burst of intense reading a few months ago, Ralph now barely looks at the pile of books beside his bed; how he no longer bothers to follow the thread of most television dramas, how his favorite activity has become sitting on the porch watching squirrels with his dog—well, to be honest porch sitting has always been one of Ralph’s favorite activities, but he used to sit there listening to talk radio gathering fodder to argue politics with me. The radio is still on but he doesn’t much listen, and we never argue because he agrees so easily with whatever I feel like pontificating about.

But Alzheimer’s Wife has forced me to think about the years to come, to wonder if I should be using this time better—working with more discipline on my writing, volunteering more actively in the community, travelling. I keep making those plans but have yet to follow through.

Mostly Ralph and I live in a kind of calm bubble of daily routine, many of those hours spent nearby but apart. I write down any activities or appointments he needs to complete on an erasable board. Then, while I take care of the loose ends of our business and avoid working on my third novel, he mows grass, does the chores we’ve set together, or sits on the porch.

The one ritual that defines us as a couple, that we still share almost exactly as we did thirty years ago or maybe with improvements, is morning coffee. When we first married, I didn’t drink coffee but made Ralph’s every morning because his first wife did (or he said she did). Eventually I started drinking it myself. Then once the kids were out of the house, Ralph and I started taking turns making it and bringing each other our first cup, then often our second. Morning coffee, Ralph is sharpest and most relaxed. We watch the birds through our uncurtained window, listen to NPR rest stories, talk. This when we discuss any issue I want Ralph to understand and remember, doctor’s appointments, financial decisions, anything about our kids, lately the preparations for my daughter’s upcoming wedding.

In four or five years will we still be able to share coffee? Alzheimer’s Wife can’t answer that question. No one can. But Ralph and I giving up morning coffee together is the Rubicon I dread crossing.

The Arsonist by Sue Miller: Early Alzheimer’s Realistically Portrayed

Alzheimer's and the Arts, , , , , , ,

I read a lot of novels in the alternative universe where I write reviews for a publishing trade magazine. I try to read as objectively as possible to judge if the author’s language, characters and plot come together in a way that moves, challenges and/or entertains.

Once in a while a novel or story comes along that I can’t help connecting to on a more personal level, and that is definitely the case with Sue Miller’s new novel The Arsonist. The novel is about a small New England town where tensions between summer and year-round residents intensify when a series of suspicious house fires occur. The ostensible heroine is Frankie, a single woman in her forties returning home to stay with her parents at their summer place, and the novel largely revolves around her ambivalent romance with the local newspaper editor covering the fires.

But for me the central characters were the woman’s parents, the long-married Sylvia and Alfie. Though madly in love in the beginning of their relationship Sylvia has become increasingly disillusioned with Alfie, a self-important academic. Frankie has always adored her father and always been piqued by what she sees as Sylvia’s “only-slightly-veiled contempt, or disdain.” The reader is viewing Sylvia and Alfie through Frankie’s eyes, at least at first, and to Sylvia Alfie seems unchanged; but even early on my antennae went up—Sylvia’s protective yet resentful attitude to her husband and his “projects” seemed uncomfortably familiar.

And sure enough, it’s not long before Alfie gets lost driving home along long familiar roads and Sylvia has to admit, to herself at least, that Alfie is “failing, the thing they’d both been aware of in less critical moments, that they’d talked about, gingerly, over and over.” What makes the moment disturbing is not simply that Alfie has forgotten, but that he so quickly turns helpless and passively willing to let Sylvia take over.

I was hooked.

From here until I put the novel down, I found myself skimming through the descriptions of the fires, only marginally interested in the who-done-it mystery or the romantic moments between Frankie and her good-natured new beau. What I cared about with increasing anxiety was Alfie’s gradual but escalating loss of mental capacity and how Sylvia, a highly competent, self-aware woman still young enough to maintain her fully active life, reacted.

There is no sugarcoating or sentimentality here, and no easy solution. Without giving away more of the plot, I promise that Sue Miller captures exactly the reality of being the spouse (or child in Frankie’s case) of someone with Early Alzheimer’s. The guilt, the anger, the protectiveness, the moments of affection and the moments of furious impatience. I didn’t simply identify with Sylvia; I felt as if Miller had excavated my own psyche. Sylvia may be a fictional character, but she is me.

Into the MCI Maze: Starting From Today

Tracking Changes, , , , , , , , , ,

My husband, whom I am calling Ralph at his request (see “About” above), has the Condition called Mild Cognitive Impairment. His MRI and spinal tap show that he has plaque build up consistent with the disease called Alzheimer’s, but as his doctor repeats, he does NOT yet have the DISEASE CALLED Alzheimer’s. He has  the CONDITION called MCI.

Some people with MCI slip quickly into Alzheimer’s or dementia. Others reach a plateau and stay there. For now, because of his medicines,  because he’s lucky, or because I’m in avoidance, Ralph seems to be on the plateau.

I admit I have not kept track of the changes in Ralph as well as I should have. I missed the starting line. And living with him day to day, I can easily miss  gradual alterations that others who see him less often find shocking. Since greater changes may be coming—ok, will be coming—I need a point of reference going forward, and here it is:

What he remembers:

Facts—He watches Jeopardy every night and is still a strong armchair contestant.

His meds—As long as I fill his weekly pill boxes (Namenda and Donepezil for memory and generic escitalapram for depression and anxiety).

His daily routine—He feeds the dog, takes a walk,  takes a nap, maybe spends a couple of hours every day in his workshop “organizing my tools.” Now that the weather has warmed up, he does a lot of mowing. By mid-afternoon he’s sitting  on our front porch, whatever the weather, listening to the radio and smoking a cigar. (I know smoking is bad but this fight isn’t worth fighting right now.) Mondays he drives himself to see his psychiatrist. He eats lunch at Burger King beforehand and stops at the post office afterwards.

How to drive— His actual driving skills remain strong although he drives more slowly, maybe a good thing. As long as I am there to give directions, he can drive anywhere day or night. Alone, he can find his way to certain key locations : his psychiatrist, Burger King, and our daughter’s house.

What he forgets:

Who people are—not just names but also that certain people exist.

Conversations—often enough that I assume anything I have told him will be forgotten–scheduling details, financial decisions, family issues. Of course, the upside is that I can tell him a secret and know it is safe. Plus he forgets arguments immediately.

Memories, Especially Bad Memories—Despite common assumptions, his long term memory is not much better than his short term but it is selective. He has forgotten quite a few specifics of his past, but they come back with prodding. What he has more trouble remembering are arguments, why friendships went awry and family estrangements occurred. Even when he’s reminded, he doesn’t feel the old angers. An unexpected benefit.

Who he is:

Sweeter than he used to be; less aggressive; more patient; less easily bored (because he doesn’t remember the twenty minutes of waiting for the doctor once it’s over); more in the moment.

But also less ambitious; less energetic; less adventurous; more passive; more dependent.

Still passionate about his farm and his dog; still able to fix anything with his hands; still a voracious reader (he says he can’t remember what he’s reading until he opens the book); still adept at analyzing numbers, facts and human nature (even if he can’t remember his analysis five minutes later)—in other words, although  I’ve been warned there’s no telling how long before MCI begins chipping more deeply into his identity, Ralph is still himself in the most important ways.