Hey guys and gals,
I’m back, seems like ages since I’ve been alert enough to post anything here and I’ve missed y’all a great deal. Things started getting tough a couple of months ago. I had my regular visit with my neurologist about three months ago and received confirmation of what my wife and I had feared; my progress was moving quite a bit faster than we had anticipated. It was suggested that I no longer be left alone for more than short periods of time, no unsupervised cooking on the stove, etc..., you get it, I became an overwhelmed toddler requiring way to much attention.
Now we had always planned on moving into a condo when my condition worsened but before I started losing touch with reality. I felt that would be easier for all concerned and I would be less likely to always be wanting to “go home” if I had time to get used to my new surroundings while I had some competent cognition. With the confirmed news of my progression, we decided to update our plans and go ahead with the move. We soon found a condo that we both loved situated on a lake but it was an older unit in need of some TLC. We decided this was ideal because if this was to be our last hoorah, we wanted everything in the new place to be exactly what we wanted and we could get it this way for $70-80,000 less than walk-in condition.
So, off we went. We hired many things done (new hardwood, updated bathrooms, painting, etc...) that I would have done myself in years past but I’m simply unable to do now. Even with this, there were a lot of other tasks to be completed and I felt I had to get them done. I couldn’t rest as long as a job I had set for myself remained uncompleted. Problem is, I no longer have the stamina, mental or physical, to maintain this attitude. But that’s not something I could easily admit to myself. To top it off, I only sleep 2-4 hours per night so I’m usually in a state of exhaustion to begin with. By 2 or 3 in the afternoon I was completely spent. It was all I could do to drag myself home and collapse for the rest of the evening. Most of the time as a babbling idiot. By the next morning I was ready to start the entire process all over again.
It didn’t take long until I was in an almost permanent down phase. I could feel that this activity was costing me mentally and physically and I wasn’t sure that I would ever regain what I was losing. Yet, in my go go go state, I couldn’t stop myself. I just had to hope the loss wouldn’t be to severe or permanent.
Jeff and I have discussed these types of changes several times and we’ve termed them plateaus. We feel that certain stressors, whether they be mental, physical, or environmental, are so great that they overwhelm our system and wind up destroying some of our abilities. If we’re lucky, these changes won’t be completely permanent, we’ll return to so semblance of normalcy of our former selves. Right now, most of my changes related to this move feel fairly permanent but I am regaining some clarity. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to pen this little missive. Our final move is next week and things should really start to settle down after that, or that’s the plan anyway. Then we’ll see what’s what.
I know this has been kind of long and rambling but I wanted you to know why I’ve been gone, that I didn’t just go awol. And I wanted to share the dementia patient’s perspective of stress on our lives. It ain’t pretty but for us, for me anyway, when it gets really bad, at least I’m foggy enough that it doesn’t really concern me, I’m just floating in my own little jello world, enjoying my own warped sense of reality. Sometimes that’s not all bad.
Hope you guys have a awesome evening!
Randy
