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July 24, 2007 [Author's Note: The following is an excerpt from a book that I am working on. Just like the life that my husband and I are living ...this is a work in progress.] It's nice to be able to sleep a little later today
since we've been getting up so early for all of the medical tests, etc.
Unfortunately, my husband gets up extremely early (like 4:30 am to 5:30 am) on a
regular basis and I am a very light sleeper so I wake up whether I want to or
not. Sometimes I can fall back to sleep but sometimes I can't.
This Friday morning I didn't hear him get up so I
actually slept until about 7:00 am. I'm grateful that I won't be groggy
for most of the day as the heat tends to make a person sleepy without the excuse
of getting up at the crack of dawn.
I have my grocery list ready and all I have to do
is make sure that my husband takes his morning pills, eats some breakfast and
gets cleaned up and dressed. As I have explained before, this simple ritual is
not as easily accomplished as it should be. He fights me (not literally) on
taking the pills, doesn't eat when he should and rebels against shaving and
getting ready to go out. It usually takes several hours to get him going so I
fudge on the time that I want to leave the house. For example; if I want to
leave at 11:00 am I tell him that we are leaving an hour early. Most of
the time this tactic works but not always. He asks me what time I want to leave
about fifty times (give or take a few hundred) and after awhile it starts to
annoy me. As I previously mentioned, I am not a very patient person and when I'm
tired, my temper is short. Once again...the guilt creeps in when I snap at him.
We eventually get into the car and make our way to
our usual three stops. First, it's to the drugstore for sundries and at times,
prescriptions, then to my favorite book store for my dose of English Magazines
and then to the Super Market where I do our actual food shopping. The entire
trip takes about two and a half hours and in the summertime it is very tiring
because of the ever-present heat. I keep him close to me in the market because
if I don't pay attention he starts to use his own imaginary grocery list and I
find that my cart is filled with junk. He loves sweets and chips (just like a
kid) and if I don't watch out I will come home with so much ice cream that there
isn't room for anything else in my rather small freezer section. To put it in
perspective, it's like shopping with a small child who grabs things off of the
shelves and sneaks them into the basket.
The rest of the day is fairly calm until it's time
to take his evening pills which is always a terrible battle. I have a time frame
in which I am to give him the medication and for some reason he feels that this
is a terrible imposition on him and refuses to take the pills when I
ask him too. It takes me at least two hours to get him to comply and by the time
I have accomplished this task I am in a horrible mood. No matter how much I
learn about Alzheimer's Disease and no matter how much I "get" the condition and
it's behaviors, I still can't deal with the resistance that he puts up when it
comes to something important like taking pills.
The evening approaches and finally the long week is
over. We watch our separate television programs on separate television sets and
for a little while I feel like I live a normal life. It's a nice
break.
The weekend approaches and unless we are invited
out by one of our kids we don't do much of anything. It's my favorite time of
the week....
Saturday and Sunday are truly my days of rest
from the running around so I savor them and look forward to them every week. I
like to think that my husband feels less stressed out as well even though he has
no memory of the events of the previous week.
I hope that you will all look at the links that I
incorporated into my articles as it is important that we all know about
this disease and what we might have to face in the future.
As a reminder I will link you to the important ones
again:
Click here for the Alzheimer's Association (US). Click here for more articles on Alzheimer's research (Medical News Today). "There but for the grace of God go..." ALL of
us.
Thank you for reading my series and if it helped in
some small way to better understand what life can be like living with
Alzheimer's disease I will have accomplished my goal.
------------ About the author: Meri has a Medical/Legal background and is a former forensic researcher specializing in psychological profiling. Visit the Xlibris Bookstore! Email: writers2@cox.net Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
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