Grocery tensions

I've been putting off going to the grocery store, but we finally had to break down and do it tonight. Before leaving the house, there was this exchange:

"I don't want to fight in the produce aisle," I said, "so here's the deal: we just threw away a dozen rotten apples, some petrified oranges and a shriveled-up lemon. I don't want to buy stuff that we're not going to eat."

"Well can you just talk to me without lecturing me?"

"I don't know how else to say it. Look, we're between seasons on fruit. We're way past apple season, we're moving out of citrus season, and the strawberries and blueberries aren't ready yet. On the vegetable front, there's all our potatoes over there. We have onions. I think we could just skip the produce aisle. Would that be all right with you?"

"Okay."

We go straight to the car, drive three minutes to the grocery store, walk in, and she makes a bee-line for the apples. She only puts three in a bag, which is good news, but then she heads for another type of apple and fills a second bag with those. I try to hurry us along to the deli section but she turns back and says, "we need produce." She buys about six different things that Adam and I won't eat and she won't cook even if we would eat them. They will mold in the crisper of the refrigerator until Annie cleans it out on her next visit. 

I know she can't help it. It's a heartbreaking reminder of what's going on in her brain. And the dollar amount is hardly a rounding error in what this disease is going to cost our family. But it kills me to spend money this way. 

There are three other issues built into our shared grocery experience: (1) I have moved uninvited into an area of family life that was always exclusively hers, (2) I tend to buy the same tried-and-true things over and over and she always reaches for the new and unfamiliar, and (3) my objective is to get to checkout as fast as humanly possible while she has no objective other than to savor the endless possibilities on all those shelves. 

On the way to the grocery store, the mood lightened briefly when I looked up into the suddenly cloudless sky and saw the crescent moon and the planet Venus, one day past its brightest state, dominating the western sky. I pointed it out and May was for a moment her old moon-self, and Adam supposed that we were the only people in the world who had ever seen Venus and then wanted to know why we couldn't see Mercury, which he reminded us was on the other side of Venus and closest to the sun. We were in the grocery store for so long that when we came out, Venus had fallen below the horizon and the moon was almost there. May said, "Look at the moon now." Adam stopped to look while I looked but didn't stop and ran over him with a full grocery cart. He tried to play the victim and I told him if he was going to walk in front of the cart it was his responsibility to keep from getting run over. And that's pretty much how it all went... 

Splinter issues

She got a splinter in her foot about ten days ago. It didn't look like a big deal, so I told her it would work itself out. It hadn't done that by yesterday, so she asked me if I thought she should soak it in hot water and I said yes. About 30 minutes later she presents me with a waterlogged sliver of wood about a quarter-inch long and shows me the hole in her foot it came out of. I was impressed. 

My next pass through the living room, I see her with her foot in a pan of water. I ask what she's doing. "Well," she says, "I have this splinter in my foot and I thought if I soaked it in hot water, I could get it out." 

"You already got it out," I said.

"I did?"

"Yes, I think you got all of it."

"But it still hurts, and it's red."

"Well there's still a lot of anger in there. Give it some time."

She wasn't sure whether to trust me, but she dried her foot and put away the pan.

UPDATE 

This evening she came upstairs looking quite happy.

"I think that thing in my foot worked itself out," she said. "It doesn't hurt and I can walk normal..."

"It didn't work itself out, you squeezed it out, yesterday..."

"I did?"

"You did."

She made a muscle pose with her right bicep, grinned and looked pleased with herself, and she had a pleasant night. 

The eyebrows are exactly the same

She comes into my workspace carrying a portrait of me when I was about two years old, claiming that Adam is the spittin' image of me. I don't see it. She tries to convince me. We debate it for a few minutes. Finally she traces her finger over my eyebrows and then does the same to the photo. 

"See," she says, "the eyebrows are exactly the same." 

"You know why?" I ask.  

"Why?" 

"Because those ARE my eyebrows. This is me, and that's me. You're comparing me to me." 

"Oh ... yeah."

And then you snap

As we pulled into the parking lot at the mall, she said "I wish I could drive..." and I knew it was going to be a bad day. We were there to eat lunch at The Corner Bakery--straight across from Barnes and Noble. As we ate, she said, "Are you looking for something in particular?" I knew she meant at Barnes and Noble. I explained that I was only there to eat lunch. 

Twenty minutes later, on our way out of the restaurant, she said, "Are you looking for something in particular?" No, I wasn't even planning to go in the book store. We can, but just to look around. 

I went back to check on Tom and Jerry DVDs for Adam while she browsed the buy-two-get-one-free paperback table. When I returned, she had two from the 2+1 table and a new release hardback, which she expected to get as her free selection. I explained it three times: this hardback is not going to be free. She decided to put the two back and just pay for the hardback, by a writer she never heard of--she just liked the looks of the dust jacket. 

On the escalator to the main floor she displayed her exasperation and said, "Could I just have a certain sum of money that I can spend any way I please?" To which I said, you have a credit card for which last month's bill was $2,200. 

At checkout she decided I had ruined the whole experience and it wasn't worth buying anything. Her complaint was a familiar one: "Would it bother you to just let me buy a book? I sit in that house all day. You come and go as you please. But all I can do is read a book." But the house is full of unread books that were bought on that very premise. I tell myself, she likes to shop, let her shop. But today I snapped and said, "Yes, it does bother me to buy books that never get read, buy food and watch it rot, buy clothes that never get worn. It's not about reading, it's about the retail transaction. It's five minutes of pleasure for $100, and then do it all over again the next day. I've done all of that I can afford for a while. We need to take a break from the retail experience." 

You go along with it 20 times and on the 21st time you snap--and you're a mean insensitive person for it. And then you start over at 1.  

Let it be...

"How much do you know about what's going on with your brain?" I asked her. "Not much," she said. "I know I have trouble remembering things." I told her she had Alzheimer's disease, which we've talked about several times. There was a far-away look in her eyes, like she was being reminded of something very troubling. I brought it up because I had started to read a book about Alzheimer's and I needed to know if she wanted me to tell her what I found out. She said she wasn't sure, but just talking about it was upsetting enough for me not to bring it up again. 

Another bad retail day

When I told her that I was going to a meeting today, she asked if there were any shopping malls near where I was going. There is a big one -- too big to turn her loose in and then hope to find her again, so I suggested that I drop her off at Borders Books & Music where she could read in their coffee shop until I came back to get her. On the way there, I brought up a topic I had been avoiding--that we couldn't be putting a hundred dollars on her credit card every time she wanted to get out of the house. I gave her $40 in cash and told her not to use her credit card. 

I was gone three-and-a-half hours. I hurried back to the Borders store hoping (1) that she would be there, and (2) she would be okay. What a relief to find her with a smile on her face. She said she'd had a great time. Then she showed me her purchases: a little stack of magazines and art supplies. I asked if she had paid for them and she said yes. "Where's the bag," I asked. She looked around and couldn't produce one. "How about a receipt?" She dug in her purse and came up with one for $2.75 for a cup of tea. "How much cash do you have?" She looked in her wallet and found $17. That would be the change from the cup of tea. I looked for the other $20 bill and found another $17 -- probably change from an earlier cup of tea. 

She could have paid with her credit card though. I said we needed to see if they remembered her at the cash register. When we got there, there was a large stack of books and other art supplies on the counter. "That's mine," she shouted, and grabbed it. I said, "no, this is yours," and held up the stack I had found her with. That confused her, and I had to admit that the stack on the counter was the kind of stuff she always bought in a book store. Apparently, she had made it as far as the purchase counter before I got there, and maybe abandoned stuff to get down to her $40 limit, which was now $34. 

If that were the case, was I about to pay for it twice? Trying to sort it all out was hugely upsetting to her, undoing all the good feeling from the afternoon she had spent there. The ride home was miserable. She hates being cooped up in the house, but I don't think I can take her anywhere now unless I stay with her the whole time. 

Refreshment adventures

At Borders today, May said she was thirsty and didn't have any money. I gave her a $10 bill and went on browsing. When she didn't come back after about five minutes I walked over to the coffee bar--just in time to see her ordering a drink and paying with a credit card. I asked her what she was doing and she said, "I was thirsty and didn't have any money." I said, "That's a pretty nice scam you have, asking me for cash and then paying with the credit card." She didn't remember the $10 and couldn't produce it either. 

After that, we went to a movie and she bought hot tea at the concession stand. We went in and took a seat and then she said she was going to visit the restroom before the movie started. When she came back, she was carrying an iced drink. "I stopped for a drink," she said. I pointed to the hot tea in the cup holder and she didn't know what it was. I asked her what was in the new cup and she didn't know. I was drinking Coke from a branded cardboard cup that was the smallest size they had at the concession stand. Her cup was much smaller and made of clear plastic, like something someone would bring into the theater from the restaurant next door. I asked her if she paid for it and she couldn't remember.   

Doubling up

I was away on business Tuesday night and Wednesday night. I put May's pill box on the dining room table and told her I would call her when it was time to take a dose. I left on Tuesday afternoon and called her when I got to California. The pill box was right where I left it and she took her two pills. 

I called her again on Wednesday morning and the pill box was not where it was supposed to be. I hung up while she searched for it. When I called back in about ten minutes she had the pill box in-hand. I told her to find Wednesday morning and take out those pills. She said that compartment was empty. I told her to check Wednesday afternoon--that compartment was empty too. They were loaded when I left. I told her not to take anything that day. 

On Thursday, I called her from the airport and told her to find the pill box--she didn't know where it was. I told her not to do anything until I got back. I arrived home about 2:30, found the pill box and gave her the morning dose. About 8 o'clock that night she said, "Shouldn't I be taking more medicine?" I told her to get the Thursday evening dose from the box upstairs. She came back downstairs with the right pills in hand. 

Before I went to bed I moved the pill box to its normal place in my office and noticed that both Friday compartments were empty. Somehow, between 2:30 in the afternoon and 10 o'clock that night, two days worth of medicine had been removed from the box. I know she swallowed two of them, and she either swallowed the other two or put them down somewhere and never got back to them. And that was the second time in three days it had happened. She has no recollection of how it might have happened. 

Night attack

Last night I had a dream that I was driving a car with Adam wedged behind me, pinching my back relentlessly in one place. I thought he would tire of it, but he didn't. I told him to stop, but he kept on. I swiped at him with my hand, but he persisted. It was a steady pinch-pinch-pinch in the same spot. Finally I woke up, but the pinch-pinch-pinch continued. I made a swipe and my hand hit another hand. That's when I realized that the pain was real, but it was May, not Adam. She woke up and asked what was wrong. I said you're pinching me. I reached back and found the spot. I asked her to look where my finger was and tell me what she saw. She said, "Oh yeah, it's all red." I thought, well at least there's still skin there. Before I went back to sleep, I realized it was pretty dark. I held my hand up and all I saw was a silhouette. How did she see a red place on my back? I can still feel it this morning. 

Shopping trip

Yesterday I took her shopping at Target. This is something she misses--the ability to just roam through Target with no particular purpose and no time restrictions. I let her go on her own and told her I would be in electronics. We ran into each other some time later and I told her I wanted to go down to Best Buy, and could she spend another 20 minutes browsing? She said she could. I told her two things: (1) do not leave the store, and (2) if she wanted me to find her, go to the service desk and wait there. Yes, a cell phone would have helped, but hers had a dead battery. 

I went to Best Buy and came back 20 minutes later. I then spent the next 40 minutes making big circles through Target, pausing at the service desk on each pass. Finally I heard her calling my name. She had just come back into the store pushing a basket of paid-for items. She said she had checked out and gone looking for me in Office Max. 

You know better than to leave her alone. But for some reason, you still think you can say do not leave the store and if you want me to find you, wait over there. When are you going to learn? 

Questions on top of questions

We have the two worst repetitive question situations running simultaneously: "Do you need shirts for your trip?" and "When are we going to the grocery store?" The answers are "I do need shirts but not until Tuesday" and "Not today but before I leave town." Today I've identified "which shirts" three times, and just now she came up and asked how I wanted my shirts...

How do I want my shirts ironed? The usual way, I guess. She explained she didn't know if I was going to hang them or fold them. I told her I would eventually fold them--two days from now, so if she's ironing tonight, put them on hangers. 

***

Update, several hours later: 

She just came up making folding signs with her hands. 

"Do you want me to fold your shirts?" 

"Hangers."

"Well that's what I wanted to know."