scary thoughts
Entry posted by swilkinson
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The painters are still here, it is still raining every second day and our life has sped up again. That might have been the reason for an incident last night. It was well after midnight when someone shouting woke me up. It was Ray. He was shouting: “ Are you there Les?” when I answered “I’m here.” He said: “I don’t know where the toilet is in this place.”
For a carer this is really scary. Les, his older brother and Ray shared a room in their mid-teens. It was a back verandah and their younger brother was up the other end. So I guess shouting to each other was the normal method of communication. Using someone else’s name can mean all kinds of things, like he has had another stroke, he has had a memory lapse, he is confused etc. The thought that he might have had a stroke which had robbed him of current memories was my first thought. That would have been really scary.
Can you imagine living with someone who no longer remembers the period of time you have been in their lives, who thinks you are his sister or his mother or his aunt? One of my acquaintances had that happen to her. One day her husband woke up and had no memory of her at all. He wanted to know what right she had to be in his house etc. She.thought really quickly and said: “I’m your housekeeper.” She moved her possessions to the spare room and lived there quite happily. He accepted that she showered him, cooked his meals etc. The doctors thought he had had some kind of seizure and that had speeded up the dementia. All you can do under those circumstances is accommodate the delusion and go on with life.
Happily once the lights were on and Ray could see the familiar surroundings and the same old wife as usual in her night attire he calmly accepted the urinal which was in it’s usual place. He didn’t say anything further and went straight back to sleep. I mentioned it this morning and he said he thought he was having a dream. I think so too but worry lest this is a sign of things to come. I might add I did not go back to sleep but came out onto the computer for a while until my mind stopped worrying about what had happened.
It is so hard sometimes to contemplate what may or may not be in our future. I belong to a couple of dementia sites and some of the posts talk about the loss of recognition as it is so painful for the caregiver to no longer be know for who he or she is. Not something I want in my future with Ray at all.
I didn’t do anything much today; I left Ray on the front verandah with his word puzzles and worked on repotting my pot plants. By the time the painters got here just after lunch he was heading for bed. They have promised me that tomorrow they will start packing up and returning the verandahs, front and back, back to the way they were – weather permitting of course.
The rest of the house will be painted in late September, one room at a time. That way hopefully we can accommodate Ray and let him have some of his normal routine. And hopefully by then the weather will be warmer and paint will dry faster.
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