Update for August
Gabe needs a worktable and a chair.
That’s what I was thinking about when I woke up this morning. He still enjoys working on model cars, but when it’s time to paint them, he has a bit of a dilemma. He goes out the front door and finds somewhere on the side of the house to put down a piece of cardboard and paint. But he needs a place to sit down, so we need to find a table and chair that are not so nice he’s afraid to mess them up, but not so terrible that they look bad in the yard. We’ll work on that.
Meanwhile, as I was thinking about him going out the front door, it occurred to me that he’s navigating the house a lot better than he used to. With a dementia patient you don’t often see improvement of any kind, so this is refreshing. Gabe lived in our rental house with us for a total of seven months, and he never did learn his way around it. He claimed the doors all looked alike, but it seemed to be the large window in my bedroom that drew him to it, when what he really wanted was the French doors that led to the backyard. No matter what I did to block my bedroom door, multiple times a day he would get past the barrier and I’d see him trudging in and out of there.
In our new house (where we’ve lived since New Year’s Eve) he initially had many of the same problems. After supper each night, he would invariably take off in the direction of the front door when he meant to go to his room. On the other hand, when he’d get ready to go out for his walk, he’d stand in the middle of the house and ask, “Which door do you want me to go out?” A hundred times, we told him the front. He is not doing either of those things anymore, which is good to see.
I had that on my mind this morning when I exited my bedroom for the first time. The house was dark, blinds still closed, and relatively quiet… but strangely I seemed to hear water running. No appliances were on. The pool is not loud enough to hear indoors. A quick investigation located the sound coming from Gabe and Brady’s bathroom, where the sink had been left running full blast. For how long, I wondered?
Then, I went into the laundry room to feed the cat, and saw that the door from laundry room to garage was standing open. This could be terrible. On occasion we’ve accidentally left the actual exterior garage door open, which would mean that the indoor cat could get out and get lost, and also that we’d be fully exposed to an intruder. Fortunately this time the garage door was shut, but still. What was he wandering around looking for while we slept?
So that’s how it goes. A little improvement, a little decline. We’re hanging in there. Here’s an update on the rest of the family.
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Daughter Beth is seven months along in her pregnancy now, and all has gone well. She and her partner made it legal a couple of weeks ago, and they seem happy.
Son Brady is still unemployed and there’s no way to tell how hard he’s actually looking for a job. He remains 100% pleasant and helpful to have around, but still: the boy’s gotta get his own life started. There is a very large new supermarket opening in town and we’ve recommended that he apply there. Grocery stores are not the worst employers; Mark and I know two men who’ve made careers of it and have done quite well, plus a big store would have numerous employees of all sorts and he might find himself a girlfriend. We’ll see what develops there.
I was pretty busy in July as I was editing and attempting to trim the length of my novel manuscript so I could start sending it out to agents. I’m working on another project as well. Earlier this summer, I created a book especially for Gabe. He had been coming to Mark repeatedly to express his mystification with the ALS that took his wife. Nobody ever told him she had it, he claims. (He was told, he just doesn’t remember.) He never heard of ALS before. (Of course he did.) Anyway, I created something pretty cool, with the help of my best friend ChatGPT. It’s a picture book with very simple text, and it tells a very simplified story of Gabe and Carol’s life, including the part where she became ill and passed away. It ends encouragingly (I hope) with a statement that backs up Gabe’s belief that Carol is in heaven now, free from sickness or pain, and that they will be together again one day. It would be an understatement to say that he LOVES it. He reads it aloud to himself daily.
Before he had the book, he wrestled with trying to grasp ALS. He tried to look it up (with no success because he just goes to Facebook and posts “ALS” like a status) but I knew even if he could manage to Google it, he’d be overwhelmed by the answers. Rudimentary information is all he needed. Carol got sick, for reasons unknown. This is what it did to her body. This is why she died. Now her sickness and pain are over. He can’t retain that information, but he can read it over and over again. It has helped him a lot.
So, I decided to see if I could create other books for people experiencing cognitive decline, and address more general situations. I’ve created one and it was fun to do, but now it’s giving me a hassle as I try to get it uploaded to KDP. I gave up in frustration yesterday but I’ll get back to it. If you have a particular interest in something like that for a loved one of yours, please let me know because I’d welcome ideas and input.
The big news, I guess, is Mark. Former teacher. He took FMLA leave of absence for much of last school year. This year, he reported back to work, but I knew in my heart it was only a matter of time. In fact, I told my kids we ought to start a pool on how long it would take him to quit. I could tell as he came home reporting every little frustration that he was just looking for an excuse.
It didn’t take him long. One week of pre-planning and one week of teaching wherein he missed two days, and he was out. There is not much I can say, since I’m at home myself. He’s a diabetic, now on an insulin pump, so who am I to say how badly he feels? And who would I be to insist that he ought to keep working when I don’t know how many years he has left to live. He’s seven years younger than I am, but with his issues, he might not make it to standard retirement age. Not that he was waiting for my permission anyway. He says he’s going to substitute teach a few days a week. We’ll see.
So here we are. We work on our writing projects, we get in our (finally completed!) pool, we do whatever needs doing. We’re all looking forward to the new baby soon to join our family. And that’s about it, until next time!
