Been more than a few days since last I wrote. Sometimes it's just too depressing to rehash everything back over again after each day. Sometimes I think I need a break to not think about it. To try to go to sleep without thinking about it. I am just a kid after all, and it seems lately I can never remind myself of that enough.
Earl and I went to Big Spring today. Though it was yesterday that BB woke me up to go. She so thoughtfully opened the door then knocked. And I, still comfortably in bed at 9am (a luxury of retired persons, such as myself) threw the pillow over my eyes and kindly reminded her that she had the wrong day. But she insisted it was the day. And so I got up. I put some coffee on and went and got the calendar and showed her which day we were to go. "Yup it's TOMORROW, B."
Not being able to ever be wrong ever, she looked me straight in the eye and told me it was Earl that had got it all wrong, "Well, he just thought it was today, and you know, he is just SO confused lately because he has Alzheimer's Disease, and I tried to tell him that it was tomorrow but he just wouldn't listen." Um... did she just accuse Earl of having Alzheimer's Disease? Did she really just throw him under the bus like that to cover being wrong in her own confusion? Why yes. Yes, she just did!!! Hell all mighty!
So there was that. Then this morning I found a spoon covered with TP sunk in the toilet (seriously, what the???) and feces in the sink... and in the kitchen, okra on the stove, which had been turned off, THANK GOD. I found it sitting there cold and uncooked in a pot of water, there are two full bowls of it in the refrigerator, mind you, one of which she cooked unsupervised yesterday, in the morning before I woke up. Upon my discovery, she told me that she didn't turn it on on purpose because she wasn't allowed to cook by herself, and had just left it there to be "ready to cook," overnight, you see. Then, there was a lot of paranoid yelling set preemptive in anxious defense because she knew deep down that she had violated my trust and request to stop cooking okra all by herself. She has been yelling, at me specifically, more and more lately. Just plain ornery.
These have been the days. Days mixed with paranoid hysteria. Days of total confusion. She is really just lost most of the time, can't seem to remember much of anything. She knows she can't remember and it is starting to drive her crazy trying to keep up these little lies she tells, trying to maintain the outer appearances of sanity. It is easy for her when visiting through directed conversation on the phone, but in real life, in real time and space, in 3D, it is another story. I have just stopped trying to tell her the truth or correct her in effort to avoid a harsh defense, more confusion, and ultimately combative behavior, which is what I get whenever she is wrong about something. She keeps saying she can remember stuff just fine and that the problem is that she's just plain "stupid." Been hearing this word from her a lot and it damn breaks my heart.
At this point she is visibly struggling on the inside with the fundamentals of the thinking process. It seems like lately she has been loosing her thoughts more often than she can communicate or understand clearly. Having spent so much time with her over these past 4+ months watching these changes occur gradually and not so gradually, I can actually see it happening now on her face, in her eyes, like a switch has been turned off and everything is gone inside and hollow and dim for a bit. Just lost. Like light bulbs flickering in an electrical storm. A shorted circuit, without the cells to function all the way.
She has also been exploring the house as if it's a complete mystery to her. Like she doesn't know what is in each room. She's been walking around just staring blankly at things, clearly lost and trying to find her way, occasionally asking me to explain something when I've gone to find her. She has been constantly opening all the cupboard doors in the kitchen, just staring inside randomly examining all their contents. She has been doing this all day for the last few days over and over again, for hours. This is the latest.
As I said before, Earl and I went to Big Spring to the VA dentist today. Paula came and watched B while we were out all day. BB loves her still. So that is all working out really well. Paula has earned her trust, and I'm hoping that will help for giving B pills. We shall see. As you all know, I will be going to Austin on the 16th of this month for a week or more doing some fun young people things at SXSW with my good friend Vicky. Hopefully Paula will be able to hold down the medicine routine, and we can have a plan set for this responsibility going forward.
Earl and I had a good talk while we were alone today, and it is nice that we can speak about all this hard stuff so openly and honestly with each other. We spoke about each of our concerns for her progressing condition. About her general mobility and weakened strength. How she is, physically speaking, getting closer to really having to be in a care facility. And how it will be a struggle to get her there, but that ultimately this is what will happen based on her disease. Fantasy aside, it really seems that the kinder thing would be to make this transition before she completely loses the mental capability to adjust, waking up everyday in a place that she was never given the chance to remember. It makes me ask the question: what really is going to be best for her long run?
