Author: shann123

7:15 PM – Mom just came downstairs and asked me: “The next time you empty the sweeper, can you check to see if my little black slippers are in there?” In her mind, apparently shoes/slippers can get sucked up in there. While a Kirby does have some really good suction, it’s just not a big enough opening for something much bigger than say, legos.

Just thought that was noteworthy.

7:45 AM – This actually happened last night, but I couldn’t post until this morning:

At around 5:10 PM, Mom said that she was going for a walk. I had just woke up and was still a bit groggy and was like, ya, OK. By 6:20, I had just gotten out of the shower and was getting ready to leave for work and Mom still wasn’t home. I had read that with Alzheimer’s patients, when it gets dark even familiar places can become unrecognizable, so I figured I’d better go look for her. I ended up driving south on 13 figuring she probably went that way and I didn’t spot her until I got to Napa. She was walking south-bound (away from home). I stopped and picked her up and noticed something wadded up in her hand (more on that later), then asked her where she was going. She said, “Home.” Yeah, she was going the opposite direction from home! If I hadn’t looked for her, who knows how far south she would have gone! Anyway, I got her home and left for work, getting stopped by a train which caused me to be 4 minutes late to work.

When I got home from work this morning, I took a look in the trash to see what she was carrying with her. It was an empty bag of panty liners. What I figure happened was that she decided that she needed more and walked down to CVS to get some. She must have forgotten her money since she only had the empty bag. When she walked out of the store, she got confused on which direction she was supposed to go and went the wrong way. My best guess anyway.

So, now I’ve got to worry about her wandering off and getting lost after all! I didn’t think that was going to be something I was going to have to worry about for a while yet because she hadn’t been leaving the yard on her own before Monday when she walked down to the Chiropractor’s office to make an appointment (which she forgot about and missed.) I have a feeling that a nursing home is coming in the very near future. I don’t know what else I can do to keep her from walking off. The cold weather might prevent it, but who knows.

7:45 AM – I got home from work this morning and found this note:

I have no idea what banging I’m supposed to stop since I was at work all night. A few nights ago while I was home, she was complaining about banging… I was sitting on the couch quietly playing Red Dead Redemption 2 at the time and was just riding my horse minding my own business (not shooting anyone, so no banging.) All was quiet inside and outside the house, but she was covering her ears as if it was a really loud banging. The only thing I can think of is that maybe her blood pressure is up a little bit and she’s hearing that. Or maybe it has something to do with Alzheimer’s/dementia causing phantom noises. There’s definitely no banging, which is why the neighbors aren’t saying anything. I will try to remember to mention it to the doctor when we see her next.

4:00 PM – I was up at the hospital today getting a few tests done and when I got home, Mom had cabinet doors above the oven open and was shoving everything from that cabinet into the cabinet she keeps her canned goods. She was putting cans into bowls just to get everything to fit, leaving the cabinet above the stove empty. When I asked her why she was doing that, she said, “I’m just putting everything back.” Back where? I asked her what was wrong with leaving the bowls in the cabinet they were in, she said “I didn’t touch anything up there.” The cabinet doors were still wide open! I started pulling bowls etc back out of her soup cabinet and she’s getting pissed because “I didn’t take anything out of there!”

So anyway, I got things put away and by this time, I’m pissed, too. I drug a box that’s been sitting near the back door since we moved in here right in front of her and yelled, “you want to sort through something, sort through this!” She’s sorting through that now, FINALLY.

In other news, during her last checkup last week, I think the Dr. knows just how short term her short term memory is as well. It’s practically non-existent it’s so short. Funny thing is, it’s been about 10 minutes since I yelled at her and I can hear her out in the kitchen mumbling about how she would have had her mouth washed out with soap if she had talked her mom like that. I know, I shouldn’t have yelled, but nothing seems to get through. There’s no reasoning ability, no short term memory etc. The reasoning ability, that shows from her decision to stuff her cabinet with other things so she can’t fit any more of her soups in there. How is this a good idea? And she does stuff like this all the time! I never know where I’m going to find things when I get home from work. It’s pretty irritating and it gets to ya after a while, so I yelled.

2:45 PM – It’s been a long time since I’ve had anything to really post about. It’s been the normal stuff; forgetfulness, moving things around and claiming that “As God as my witness, I didn’t touch (insert whatever she moved and I asked about because I couldn’t find it.)”

Anyway, the reason for this post is due to a concern that she might be getting to the point where she might wander and get lost. For the last 2 days, she’s made a comment about walking down to CVS to get something or other. Yesterday it was hair bands, even though she had just carried about 50 of them upstairs not 10 minutes before saying that she was going to walk down and get some. Today it was for hangers. She had her coin purse in her hand and was ready to walk out the door. I told her that she doesn’t realize how far away it is. It’s not just down the bottom of the hill, it’s more like a mile+ away. And besides, with closets stuffed full, I don’t know how she’s going to hang anything else up! But, I told her I would pick some up for her.

5:00 PM – I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. It’s been a while since I’ve observed anything other than the normal forgetfulness etc that we’ve been dealing with. This evening, however, I once again discovered that she had added water to the soap dispenser again. I emptied it and went to refill it with just soap and found out that she had added what looked like hand lotion to the refill bottle! Of course, she denied it since she doesn’t remember doing it saying “as God as my witness, I have never added water to the soap,) but I went ahead and made up some more signs to put up in the bathroom reminder her NOT to add water or anything else. I’ve also warned her that if I discover that again, I’ll get bar soap. Yeah, add water to that! lol.

I realize that the way she was raised, you did that to stretch the dollar as much as you can. In this case, a 56 oz refill bottle at walmart is $3.97. That’s not going to break the bank. I know that part of the of my reaction to this is my problem. There’s a few things I’m pretty picky about. This is one of those things. For me, I just don’t like pushing the pump down and having having a watery soap spray everywhere.

3:30 PM – I guess it’s time to ban Mom from doing laundry now. I discovered that sometime last night after I left for work, Mom had gone out to the garage and gathered up a few rags (including a buffing bonnet and some dirty sweat pants I had used when working on the car) in order to make a full load of laundry and threw it in along with towels and dish rags. Then she left them in the washer overnight. I had to wash some of my clothes so seen everything she threw in. So when I went to add laundry detergent to my clothes, I found out she had poured some detergent from a new bottle into an old one, then added a bunch of water to both of them! How do you measure out watery detergent? Anyway, I’m tired of her getting rags and such just to make a load of laundry (a small one at that). I wish she’d find a hobby or something other than laundry! Sorry, but it just bugs me with the rags. I wash those separate from everything else to keep the dirt/oil/wax etc from getting on everything else!

9:00 PM – Mom usually doesn’t answer the phone, but tonight she decided to for some reason. We normally let it go to voicemail because of the robo-calls. I was out in the garage and she came out and handed me the phone. The person on the other end told me that Mom had pledged to donate $20.00 towards some kind of Actor’s Stage Fund, or something of the sort (it was hard to hear her). Fortunately, Mom no longer has access to her checkbook or debit card, which is why she handed me the phone. I told the lady on the other end that No, she would not be donating and that she has Alzheimer’s and is not allowed to make commitments on the phone like that. Since it was hard for me to hear the lady on the other end, I can only imagine that Mom couldn’t hear her at all and was committing to something she had no clue about. Scary!

7:15 PM – Mom seems to have a new obsession these days… Ants! I’ve seen her outside the back door a few times and she’ll just start stepping on them. The times I’ve spotted her doing that, there’s only been a couple of ants. This evening I got up to go out to the garage and seen the cabinet doors open under the sink. I got out to the garage and things had been moved around. I went back and looked by the back door and she had dumped something in a couple of spots (I later discovered that wasp spray had been moved from under the sink to the garage, so I’d say that’s what she used on the ants.). I looked around and I seen 3 ants walking around. I don’t know how many she thinks she’s seeing, but it seems she thinks we have an ant problem. Hopefully she doesn’t see the groundhog I spotted a few weeks ago or we’ll be going through that again as well as the ants!

4:00 pm – Mom is once again confused as to whether I am her brother or her son. She knows us four boys’ names, but can’t seem to wrap her brain around the fact that we are her sons. This is pretty unusual at this time of day. The confusion seems to happen more when she wakes up in the middle of the night.

A couple of new annoyances: Lately she’s been going out to the garage and grabbing old towels and washcloths that I have out there for rags and is washing them. (They were already clean and on shelves.) It seems she’s always doing a partial load of laundry now. Together with leaving the water running, this should make for some hefty water bills! The other annoyance is that she keeps adding things to the hand soap dispensers other than the Soft Soap that I have refill bottles of under each sink! She’s added water, dish soap and even hair conditioner. I can’t get her to understand that’s what the refill is for. Right now there some weird looking floaties and what looks like dish soap in the one at the kitchen sink, even though I had just cleaned it out and topped it off a couple of days ago!