MONDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2010

When I got home Carol told me how Dona had acted "strange" today and wouldn't let her take a walk (I actually knew this already because Dona called me to tell me Carol had decided to walk to get a new key made). So, Carol and I had a discussion on reasons Dona would worry about her and not the other people going for a walk. Here are the reasons I came up with:

People going for a non-worry-causing walk...

1. Don't start their walk right before it's supposed to get dark

2. Stay close to home

3. Don't bring enough documents with them to pass immigration or apply for a large loan

4. Don't have a history of trying to walk to non-existent banks

5. Aren't a petite woman walking alone

We had a laugh about it and I began making dinner. What did she want? She wasn't hungry. This is why she ended up eating a huge serving of potato salad and a tomato & grilled chicken sandwich AND two donuts.

Yea, today was good, but I thought yesterday was good, too. That is until she read the newspaper and then started to tell me to be careful with the phone and my computer because someone who said they were with Medicare called asking for my flight information for Wednesday and they've since been tapping our lines and our computers... She has an appointment with Dr. Bob on Wednesday.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2010

When I was at work today Cynthia texted me that Carol not only didn't want to go visit Tom, but she didn't want to take her medicine and didn't want lunch. Cynthia said that Carol's stomach was growling so she insisted Carol eat, but instead Carol tried to get her to leave. I suggested putting the McDonalds burger on a real plate instead of keeping it wrapped up, which she tried, but Carol took this time to go take a nap.

She's been acting strange all week and over obsessing about her keys which she (or I) will find, then she will hide from herself, then spend the entire next day looking for. This week she's gone over to Dona and Bill's at least twice to get assistance with getting her a new set. So, when I came home from work, I was not surprised when she greeted me crying because her keys were missing. I went through my usual explanation that it wasn't a huge deal, and that worrying incessantly about one material object would drive anyone nuts. That she needed to take care of herself, first and foremost. This led to me asking her what she had eaten today. She said she had eaten things here and there (mentioned a peanut butter sandwich), but that she didn't feel like eating because Tom was so sick. Something in me kind of snapped there. "Carol, Tom's fine. He's doing great, eating well, handling things better. YOU aren't doing well. You need to take care of yourself!" "I know. I know, but my keys..." "Alright," I interjected, "You've spent enough time worrying about your keys for today and not enough time eating a real meal." I threw the hamburger and fries Cynthia brought for her into the microwave and set a place for her. "How about you sit here and have dinner, and I'm going to try to find your keys, OK?" "But, you just got home, don't you need to eat dinner?" "I assure you I've eaten enough food for two."

I get half way through pulling everything out of the first shelf in her closet when she comes in and starts mumbling about how she might not have checked her purse. "Carol, did you finish your dinner?" "No, but I'm getting full. I just want to check my purse." "If you aren't going to take care of yourself, then I can't help you with your keys." I say walking to the kitchen. She follows and I stand there as she sits, then head back to her room. The rest of that shelf and another half of a shelf gets torn apart and put back together before she comes in again. Same mumbling, same response, another walk to the kitchen, and I'm back to work. A couple more times of this and finally we reach a compromise with her sitting in the bathroom eating her burger (and explaining how HORRIBLE it is to keep losing her keys), while I look. I get through the closet with no luck, but did find the garage opener hidden in a shopping bag, two lighters and 2 packs of cigarettes.

I try to decide where to start next, laundry/hallway or bedroom? Carol tells me it's ridiculous that she always loses her keys because she usually puts them in her shoes where she can find them. "That's the ridiculous part?" "Well, not in the open toes shoes."

I look through the piles and piles of mail on her bedroom desk with no luck, but did find the cool bracelets my mom got us. The back of her pendant has her specific number with Medic Alert, and says something about how she has a mental condition (I can't remember exactly how it's phrased). The back of my pendant says I'm a caregiver for, and her specific number. She kept looking at the back of hers and asking me what mine says because hers says something about her mental health. I just say mine has our address on it. We will see if she keeps it on. The clasp on it is pretty tricky, but they're really loose on our wrists. We might have to get them tightened.

Finally I find her original keys (with the electronic lock/unlock thingy) in a drawer with a bunch of old scrunchies. She wanted to hold them, but then went to slip them in her shorts pocket. "Carol, let me hold on to those until we find a better way to not lose them." "Yea, who knows how long that will be." "I promise you it will be a lot less long then the time it took us to find them today." "But, don't you work tomorrow? What if I need to go somewhere?" "Well, tomorrow is Friday so I'll probably get off work early, then we can go wherever you like. My vote is for tiramisu!"

Votes on what I should connect her keys to? Carol's idea was to get a peg board up next to the door we could both hang our keys on... We need a better idea than that. I think it was suggested I connect it to a big piece of wood, middle school style.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2010

Today I got home from work and asked Carol if she wanted to join me for dinner. She said that she would because she had worked up an appetite from trying to find her keys. I told her I had a set and she asked to see them. So, I showed the keys to her, and she also insisted that I actual start the car with them to distinguish they weren't Grandpa's. After all this is settled, she says, "I also haven't been able to find Tommy anywhere." "Carol, he's over at Emeritus in Jensen Beach. You've visited him a handful of times there." "I know, I just miss him." So, we go to check out her medicine and get her all set on that. The problem with the patch these days is that she doesn't shower very often and so it wont stick to her back most days. I tell her she should shower, and she agrees, but always puts it off.

I got her to eat a dinner of pork chops and Hawaiian bread with orange juice. Throughout which she commented on how she missed my Grandpa despite how much of a pain in the butt he was, but how "that's just how it is now." I told her that Cynthia and her were going to visit him tomorrow.

If you hadn't gotten the update on her this weekend, here's what you missed: I was working from home Friday, so I saw her come and go on 3 short walks. Before I left for Joel's I got her set up with her meds, a big lunch and a bunch of easy to grab and eat foods. As told by Dona (the neighbor and Carol and Tom's friend), after I left Carol decided to go on another walk, this one heading with her purse and her big check book binder to the bank that no longer exists. Then she was planning on walking to the gas station to get cigarettes. On Saturday she was obsessed with finding her keys, to the point that she implored Bill (Dona's husband) to help her create a new key. My phone was dead for most the day on Saturday, so when I got home at 8, I had missed all the drama. Carol was already getting ready for bed.

Yesterday I opened all the windows and doors in the house for the perfect weather, and Carol and I went for a long walk. I let her lead the way so if I ever need to come looking for her, I now know the path she likes to take. Then we hung out for awhile, me reading, her fussing with the trees in the yard for awhile. Dona and Bill invited us to go over to Conche Joes on the Indian River a little later, and although Carol didn't talk very much, she didn't seem anxious at all. When we got home she was excited to eat some of her little birthday cake she insisted we buy on Thursday, something she hadn't yet touched, surprisingly.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2010

I wasn't surprised to see Carol up this morning, as she went to bed at 6:30 the night before. I had gotten home from work and told her I was going to make pork chops. When she didn't come out of her room as usual, I went to check on her and found her curled up sleeping in bed. This means that she didn't take her medicine yesterday--also meaning that to try to work at home today is to dodge having the same conversation over and over and barely getting anything done.

I figured that in her state we would be better off visiting Grandpa tomorrow and going grocery shopping today during my lunch break, so off we went. Somehow as I was rushing her to make a Windixie trip in under an hour, she managed to talk me into one of those little birthday cakes that have a 4 inch diameter. So, there's that.

Around 3 she started asking about her keys. I felt like I blew her off the other night which resulted in her calling Bill, so I took some time to finally locate her keys in the folds of towels in her closet. She said she was happy to have found her keys because she was going to visit Tom. I wasn't going to make her drive herself to Jensen Beach, so off we went.

The whole ride there she kept holding her head and maintaining a face close to crying. When she saw the big letters of Emeritus she said very seriously to me, "you know what Emeritus means, right?" "What?" I asked happy that the silence was broken with an intriguing fact. "It means the end." She looked at me pointedly. "Where did you hear that, that can't be right." "The people there told me." "Really." When we parked I got my phone out and within a minute found that the real definition was " One who is retired but retains an honorary title corresponding to that held immediately before retirement." I told her this, but her mind was preoccupied.

Grandpa was sitting on his bed watching MTV when we walked in, "Hey Sunshine," he said to me and warmly greeted Carol. The conversation ran smoothly until he started getting mad about being there. Who has Carol talked to? Can't she talk to Dr Bob? Every time I interjected to help her, he said something like, "I wasn't asking you." So, I resigned myself to occasionally interjecting to ask him to lower his voice or stop swearing. Carol wondered randomly into the other room, and I went after her to make sure she was OK. "I'm done" she says and starts cleaning up the non-existent mess in the other room. I went back and actually had a nice conversation with Grandpa for twenty minutes. I was aiming to wait until he was supposed to go to dinner before we left, but then he said out of the blue "are you shopping in the boys section these days?" Alright, time to head over to dinner. "Do you think I look OK? I don't have any money so I hope your paying," he say. "That's OK, you look fine," and Carol agrees. "Yea," he says, "I guess we all look a little rough." "Grandpa, I actually look nice. I straightened my hair!" I pitifully point out.

We get him all set up at his table all by himself (guess he hasn't made friends) and chatted a little bit longer. He asked if we were coming tomorrow and Carol said that we were (we are?). She said we would come by probably at the same time (we will?). This prompted him to tell us a half strung together story about how places like that place now have all sorts of visiting hours (OK, understandable), but he was reading in the paper about these people going around taking a (here he did the motion of a hammer until we filled in the word) to peoples heads...

On the ride home I tried breaking silence by pointing to the sky and saying that I thought I remembered that Bill's favorite color was the color the sky was on a clear day. "Looks a little grey," she said sadly.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2010

Cynthia got Carol to go to visit Tom today, but informed me that she was an emotional wreck about it. When I got home there were a group of neighbors standing outside with Carol wearing a purse. I guess she didn't know where she was heading, but she told me she had already gone on one walk today around the block, and just going for another, but realized it was getting dark so she stopped to talk to the neighbors. From what I got from Dona, it sounded like the crowd gathered because Carol was going out with her purse and no direction.

Today also marked the first day I've come home from work and the door wasn't locked.

So, we had some chicken quesidillas and talked about our days. She couldn't really tell me a lot about hers and I didn't want to pry if she truly had been an emotional wreck.

As I was heading off to my room to watch Glee, Carol asked if I had seen her keys. "No, but its too late to worry bout it now. We can talk about it tomorrow." "But, it is just HORRIBLE!" "Carol, it's really not." "Why does this keep happening?" "I don't know, but I look forward to figuring it out tomorrow."

Sometimes I worry about us girls staying here alone, but then I remember that we can't even find our valuables, making us a robbers worst nightmare.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2010

Today I asked Carol if she wanted to go see Tom and she said that she was going to wait until she got stronger--same excuse. I told her I was going for a walk, and that if she changed her mind, we could still go when I got back. At the last minute before I walked out the door I decided not to bring my keys after-all and left them on the dresser by the door. When I got back about an hour later from my walk down to the pier I asked her again and she said "No, I don't think so honey."

At many intervals throughout the afternoon she came to me saying she lost her keys and kept showing my this Ford key she had. I told her that the Ford key didn't go to her car and must have been from something older. After several sessions of looking around for her key everywhere imaginable, I just told her that keys are impossible to find when you're anxiously looking for them, and that I had a pair and it was not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. The last time she came to me about it at 7pm I asked her where she needed to go that she needed her key so badly right now, and she replied that she thought we were going to dinner. We have not made plans like this at all, in fact, as I reminded her, we had actually talked extensively about the wonderful looking chili that Dona brought over for us to have for dinner. I told her I was going to a movie, but got her set up with some dinner. I walked out to my car only to find that I did not have a key on my key chain with which to drive my car! Someone had actually taken the time to take my key (yes, Ford) off of my key chain. I walked in and asked Carol if I might see the contents of her pocket and possibly her purse. We finally located her purse jammed between her bed and her nightstand and (thankfully) easily found my key. "Who would do this?" She asked, "I don't have any need for your key." "I know, but you have a habit of this kind of stuff." "No, I don't." "I showed her what was under her pillow--two packs of cigarettes and a pile an inch high of mail (kid you not). I told her it was OK, and we found the key quickly, so no problems. Then, I rushed out the door to my movie.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2010

This morning I asked Carol if she wanted to go visit Tom, she said she was going to lay down for a little bit (10 AM), so I ran over to Walmart and got some things. After she got up and we had some peanut butter sandwiches and watermelon, I tried to get her to go see grandpa with me. She said no, flat out. "So you're going to make me go alone?" "Yes" "Any reason?" "I don't think I want to see him like that." "Well, he's going to be there for awhile. Are you never going to visit him again?" "I'll have to see." [long pause] "what if he misses you?" "Well, I have to live my life."

I figured I wasn't going to make any leeway with her, so I just went alone.

"Hi, Sunshine!" Grandpa greeted me from the tucked away room at the highest tower of this assisted living palace. My conversation with Grandpa was a lot like the one he had with John, just continuing to ask how he got where he was, then when I told him he wasn't doing well and was in the hospital and then either saying, "I don't remember that" or "well what the hell is this bullshit." The good thing was that whenever he started getting worked up, I would just look away and he would say, "I'm not mad at you. I just need someone to piss and moan to." Love it. I was hoping to just skip the whole conversation about Carol not coming with me, but the conversation kept steering that way. Where is she? Is she with her mother? She didn't sleep here last night. I haven't seen her in days. Is she OK? I told him that she is staying at their home in Port Saint Lucie (he seemed confused about where he had last lived) with me and simply had a headache and decided to lie down. "Well, she can have a headache HERE." "Can we go where she is now?" "Tell her I want her to come here... TODAY." I also offered to unpack the neat pile of boxes in the corner (that my mom had already unpacked), but he insisted it would be a waste to do so, because "they're" moving out to Carol's mom's house tomorrow. I told him tomorrow was Sunday--"The day after that then."

When I got home Carol asked me how my "day...morning?" was. I said it was fine, and that I went to go visit my Grandpa. "Oh, you went went there with out me?" "Yes, you said you didn't want to go." She nodded slowly, concentrating on the floor. "I just need to get my strength up." "Well, he sounded like he was really worried about you and missed you." To that she nodded again and turned to her room and shut the door. Didn't come out until I started making Lasagna a little while later.