New surprises (good or bad) everyday

[Poppygail]

Good morning all,

I am still early enough in my journey that I have a new surprise almost every day concerning something else I have lost or an ability that has been diminished. This happened to me again and again yesterday.

My wife and I took a trip of ~100 miles to visit my brother who is in intensive care. As I think I have mentioned before, I am legally blind and do not drive. My wife drives but considers it the bane of her existence. On top of that if she thinks she should turn right there's better than an 80% chance she should turn left. Not her fault, it's a trait of her family, just genetics. Therefore, I am the designated navigator when we travel. Now I mention this because this is where my first surprise came. The trip we took is one we've made many times, we went to college in this town, spent six years there. So, I am very familiar with the area. The majority of our trip is interstate- no problem. But when we reach town and get off on the surface streets, streets I actually know very well, I might as well have been entering a town I had never visited before nor made ny preparations for. I had no idea how to get to the hospital from the interstate. Thankfully my wife overrode her genes and drove us straight there without incident. She is awesome.

My next surprise came as I walked into the ICU room and saw my brother. I had pretty much complete mental clarity and was able to find most of the words I wanted to use. I believe this was because I focused so intently on my brother's condition that there was little room for anything else to work it's way into my brain. I kind of equate it to the intense attention a cat will pay to a laser beam moved across the floor. Little can distract the cat from chasing that light. Well, little could distract me from my focus on my brother.

My final surprise came as we headed home later in the evening. I basically crashed and was pretty much useless. I think I had used all my energy and the available chemicals in my brain to maintain my focus and clarity while at the hospital. I literally had nothing left after the intense portion of our trip was over. It took me the remainder of the evening to recuperate.

To have all of this occur in the span of a few hours in one day was just basically freaky to me. But apparently it's just another of the ever changing steps in this dance. All we can do is try to adapt and move forward as long as we can.

Hope some of that made sense, be well,

Randy

[jaykay777]

Randy, you are wise in saying, "All we can do is try to adapt and move forward as long as we can." As someone who will soon turn 86, I will apply that to my own life.

[Lori56 in reply to jaykay777]

We all try to cope with this disease There tips about things from behavioral etc The truth is where are being ask to do lose parts of ourselves love ones are being ask to watch us turn into a person with out things that counted on us for I know my husband misses me and wants me to be the same old person I was and so do l caregivers and dementia patients we are trying to cope we something that not really copeable but if you fall down and get back up and keep trying I said where all brave so brave when you think you mess up you didn't Just hanging in there is asking so much of you

[daddyt]

Makes perfect sense... to us (: