The Joy of Rambling

This is a follow up from my post “I’m watching him go away.”

He’s Back… for the most part.

The brain is a crazy, complex, many-faceted organ, which is why I think fewer and fewer med students are pursuing the field of neurology. It can be disheartening to put all your energy into diagnosing and helping a patient, only to watch them develop a new, more mysterious symptom. 

I am no doctor, just a caregiver trying to respond to this guy’s revolving door of new personalities and symptoms due to Alzheimer’s. Thank God for drugs! These aforementioned med students should go into pharmaceutical research where they can make millions and never have to see a patient. My patient responded well to an increase of his anti-psychotic drug, after his sudden decline in early December. One of the side effects, however, is drowsiness. Now Jim wakes at around 7:30 a.m., complains that his feet are freezing (this is an ongoing problem), and comes out to fall asleep again in front of a heater. He’s been sleeping through most of every day this way, for the last few weeks. I know it won’t last. The drug will normalize in his system eventually and he’ll go back to being mostly awake. Or will he? I take nothing for granted.

Him being awake is harder on me, as it exposes me to endless complaint loops. The loop he was on in early December, not wanting to die here and blaming me for dragging him from his hometown, (I never knew him when he lived there) has been replaced. Now, in the evenings when he’s finally awake, he loops about how our dog, Gus, never wants to sit with him. As loops go, I prefer this one. It doesn’t frighten me as much, and even though he sometimes ends up crying over it, I don’t feel compelled to try and make it right. OK, I can’t lie. I did reach out to a breeder about a Cavalier King Charles puppy, thinking it could be trained to be his best friend. But that was short-lived. We already have two cats and two dogs in a very small house. My mental health isn’t worth sacrificing for an issue that will likely be forgotten in a week or so. Stop it, Mindy! Just stop it!

In most respects, though, I can say with confidence that he’s back to where he was before that decline, and for that I am grateful. He’s no longer asking why his sister in Arizona can’t just pop over for dinner. He seems to know we live in South Carolina and is once again content with that thought. How long this will last, no one can say. 

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I just got back from walking Gus. Jim was sitting in his usual chair in the living room. I had left him that way, half-awake twenty minutes ago. He looked up at me and said, “are we in the garage?”  

Uh Oh.