A few days before the recent big snowstorm Arlan went out one night to dump the compost. There is a deck on the back of the house and as he was going down the rather long flight of stairs he slipped on the ice on the steps. His foot went through the stair railing and snapped two rail spindles like toothpicks. He escaped unhurt.
The next day Grandpa noticed the damage and I explained to him what happened. He promptly began agitating. I wasn’t surprised since by this time I know pretty well how Grandpa’s mind works, but if you think about it it does seem weird. A man who can’t remember how to use the bathroom is considering the possibilities of being liable if someone should get hurt on his back steps. This man who can’t remember how to use the bathroom is giving me elaborate instructions on how to cordon off the back steps so no one can use them and end up suing him if they get hurt.
The concern might not have been completely on target, but it certainly was a thoughtful concern with a thought out solution which one would think would be harder to think about than how one takes a leak in the toilet. Nonetheless, such is the oddity of how the disease works.
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This morning Grandpa had serious trouble shaving again. He wouldn’t have got through it if I hadn’t been there prompting him along . . . he didn’t get through in any case . . . I had to finish up. I kept trying to prompt him, but he simply tried to shave whatever his eyes rested upon. He started with the newspaper and when he wouldn’t stop at my gentle prompting I took the newspaper away. A little miffed, he gamely started shaving his place-mat. So I finally took his hand with shaver and started him on his cheek. He shaved that for about a minute until his eyes rested on the radio sitting on the corner of the table. His mind thinks, “Hmmmm, I’d like to turn on the radio.” So he begin shaving the radio. I got him to stop, but his eyes kept going back to the radio and he kept returning to try to shave/turn it on.
Grandpa is finding it increasingly hard to cope. Things he used to try to fight his way (or attempt to fight his way) through, he now gives up and starts out by asking me to figure it out for him, or tell him if it is right. Pride is choked out by inability and confusion and just plain exhaustion with fighting with it all. He can turn his radio on 10-20% of the time. The rest of the time he simply tries to unplug it, or adjust the volume and wonder why nothing comes on. Instead of leaving him to his fruitless war I turn it on for him. Cleaning, and dealing with his teeth is another area that is rapidly heading down this path. If somehow he tries to clean and put away his teeth and I’m not there (and he realizes that he is utterly mixed up) he will leave his teeth by the sink and come ask me to “Deal with the mess at the sink.” He is paranoid that someone will break his teeth, which is part of the reason why he was always very reluctant to let anyone else touch his teeth. But now if I bring up the tub and ask him for his teeth so I can take care of them he surrenders his teeth without complaint. I almost think he dreads dealing with cleaning his teeth and trying to figure out if he has done everything right.
Today he had a very humiliating incident. It was lunch time and Grandpa’s older brother Doug was over for lunch. We were eating the leftover pizza-roll things I had made for supper the night before. A few difficult mouth-fulls into the meal Grandpa realized he had taken out his teeth sometime in the morning and it was very hard to eat lunch without his teeth. Once he realized his problem and made clear his need I went to the sink and fetched his teeth and rinsed them. Then I brought them to the table and offered them to him to put on.
But he couldn’t remember how to insert his teeth.
“You put them in upside down?” he asked, turning his top portion the wrong way around. Everyone was watching.
I tried to prompt him but it was one of those situations that all the words in the world would do no good because he didn’t understand what the words meant, at least in relation to the objects he was dealing with. So I tried to start over, taking back the upper section and giving him the bottom portion of his teeth. The bottom portion he inserted in his mouth okay, but when I gave him the top portion again he still couldn’t remember how it worked.
By this point the whole thing wasn’t helped along by the fact that Doug was trying to offer words of encouragement and Grandma was both laughing her head off and trying to give instructions as well. Grandpa started pushing the teeth about on his plate as if trying to get them to scoop up food. I saw this was another dead-end moment, so I picked up the teeth, righted them, and inserted them in Grandpa’s mouth for him.
Grandma felt bad for laughing, and Doug tried to make him feel it was all just fine, but requiring someone else to stick your false teeth in your mouth for you is a pretty low feeling . . . and all the worse when your incompetence is put on display before company.
I think Grandpa was feeling his ailment in particular today. After lunch when he tried to say something and lost the words he asked, “What is wrong with me? What is my problem? What causes it?”
“Your Alzheimer’s’s is what causes it,” I said. “You have Alzheimer’s’s Grandpa.”
Grandpa looked at Doug. “Did you know that?” he said.
“Yes,” Doug said. “I knew that.”
Sometimes I wonder what Doug thinks deep down in his own thoughts as he watches his younger brother slowly lose his mental ability. Doug is well into his 80’s and still exceptionally sound of mind, so he has no danger from the disease himself, but there must be particular sadness watching your younger brother lose everything he had–mentally and physically. In a man’s sort of way I think Doug has a lot of compassion for Grandpa. He comes to visit every week, and is willing to do anything for Grandpa that he asks (even showing him how to pee in the toilet). And Doug comes over and sits right next to Grandpa, which is the sort of thing Grandpa likes. He wants to have people near where he can feel them.
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