Behavior change

I haven't been writing much lately -- mostly because we've been in the longest period of stasis I can remember since this whole deal started about six years ago. That still seemed to be the case when I visited her this afternoon. She smiled and laughed. But I was summoned to the nurse's office and asked to okay a new medication. The nurses looked worried. They said May has been attacking the staff. When I asked what that meant, one of them said, "Like she turns into Mike Tyson." I asked how she was at night and they looked at the night nurse -- she said it happened at night too. It's a form of anxiety, they said, like she wants to get out of her skin. They're going to try an anti-anxiety drug. Several of the residents are on this same med, they said, but the look on their faces was not reassuring.

Earl

It's been coming on for a while.

Whenever I would visit during a group activity, May and Earl would be sitting together. May would greet me enthusiastically, but Earl would look jilted. If we went for a walk, Earl would soon catch up with us. On the last few visits, I noticed that the staff would spring into action, as if to protect me from the truth. "Come on, Earl," they would say when they saw me coming. "Come with me, Earl." Earl never wanted to go. I felt bad for him, and would always try to include him.

Today when I got there, May was nowhere to be found. The staff flitted around nervously. I told them to relax, that I was sure I could find her. But she was in none of the usual places. Carmen, who runs the afternoon activities, offered to help. I said, "You don't suppose she ran off with Earl, do you?" Carmen looked at me seriously and said, "How do you feel about that?" I told her I was fine with it. "Come on then..." she said and made a beeline for the residential wing that Earl lives on. I told her I didn't want to walk in on anything...

She insisted that I follow her. We got to the living area of Earl's wing just as Earl was coming out of the bathroom. May was at the dining room table waiting for him. She was glad to see me and headed back to her end of the building with me. I felt bad for Earl again, but it didn't take long for him to catch up with us. When May saw him coming she whispered, "That's my guy..." We were a threesome for afternoon BINGO.

So it's all out in the open now. The staff seems relieved. It must have been really hard on them, the coverup and all...

Unwanted attention

She stopped me on our walk today and pointed toward the Foosball table. "Wait," she said, "I need to tell you this -- one of those guys thinks I'm cute, and I don't want to have anything to do with that." She put her hands out as if to ward off something bad, and stepped away from the table.

"One of the Foosball players thinks you're cute?" I asked. She nodded yes, and made a face.

"Well you are cute, but you don't need that kind of attention from a Foosball player?"

She shook her head, like no possible good could come from that.

Bogart & Bergman

I was telling her goodbye, and that I would be back. "Not tomorrow, but soon..."

She interrupted to say: "Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but, uh..."

Amazing. With all that has been lost, the script of Casablanca is still in there!

Just my life now

I was driving away from my Sunday visit with May and thinking I really should call her Missouri friend Judy and give her a report. Judy is May's most loyal and thoughtful friend, and she's standing by her still. But I'm not much of a person for talking on the phone. I figured calling her was just another thing I should do but wouldn't -- and then, my cell phone rang. It was Judy. We talked about how May was doing and eventually Judy said, "Well here's how I'm doing..."

She had fallen and broken her shoulder. Had surgery last week, and now had to take pills (she's not a pill person) and do rehabilitation exercises (not that kind of person either). Said it all just "irritated" her.

"But I think about something May told me one time," she said. "It was not long after you moved to Evanston. I asked her how she felt about knowing that she had Alzheimer's, and she said, 'That's just my life now. I may not like it, but I wake up in the morning and I say, this is my life now, and if I can make it through this day I'll go to bed and wake up in the morning and it will be my life again tomorrow.'"

Judy said when it was time to take her pills and do her exercises, she thought of May and told herself, "This is just my life now."

Laughter, music and dancing

May was nowhere to be found when I visited just before lunch today -- but everyone had "just seen her."

"She was right here a minute ago," said Nicole, the staff person in charge of May's house. I took the opportunity to ask her why they had moved her to a different table in the dining room. Nicole said it was because they had noticed that May spent a lot of time visiting with a woman who ate at that table, so they thought it would be a good idea to have them sit together. "This other lady likes to laugh and joke," Nicole said. "And May, she likes to laugh and joke." Then she told me that they had just had a guest musician, who had asked May where she was from. When she answered "Oklahoma," the musician said she was from Oklahoma too and played a special song for May.

I went looking for her and ran into Max, the activities director. "She was just here," he said. "She was following me around." Then he laughed and said, "The musician played a song for her, Your Cheatin' Heart, you know--the Hank Williams song?" Yeah, I know that song. Max set off to help me find her.

I passed by the staff person for Country House, who said, "Hi Bill. She's over here in my house. I just saw her dancing." I headed down the long hallway of Country House and here she came in her bright red sweater, walking toward me from the far end of the corridor, a warm smile on her face.

I think she's getting the hang of it.

This year's critter

Sitting on a bench in a visiting area this afternoon, May looks straight ahead and says, "This is this year's colander...no...not that... Critter! This is this year's critter. They've all come out. They're all..." (and here she reaches out with her hands and shakes them back and forth).

"Are you describing something you're seeing?" I ask.

"Yes."

"Where?"

"Right there." She points toward a short table about three feet in front of us. It's surface is made of thin slats with half-inch gaps between them. A potted poinsettia occupies the far end of the table.

"Show me," I say.

She walks to the table and, again waving her hands around, roughs out a shape about the size of a large cat in the space opposite the poinsettia, then sits back down beside me.

"That's this year's critter?" I ask.

"Yes."