The Caregiver's Mirage

Walking is good for her. But she walks much slower than I do, and there are parts of my usual walking route where I like to run. So I didn't always invite her to come along, and I would feel bad about it. Then one day it dawned on me: she could ride her bike! That would allow her to keep up with my pace, even if I were running.

Meet, if you will, The Caregiver's Mirage: the sudden appearance of a simple solution, which vanishes as you get closer to it.

The first time we tried the "I walk/you ride" approach, she ran me down from behind not once, but twice. And any fence or flowerbed close to the sidewalk exerted a gravitational pull that slowly pulled her closer until she crashed into it.

We set out together this morning and she was sucked into the first picket fence that came along--two houses down from where we live. The fence yielded to her impact before finally snapping back. I'm thinking, one more freeze/thaw cycle and I would have been involved in a "make-good" negotiation with my neighbor one house removed.

Seeing her crash reminded me of how dangerous it was to walk in front of her, so I asked her to take the lead. However, when she couldn't see me, she doubted that I was really back there. She kept saying something that I couldn't hear so I ran up alongside her and said "I can't hear you" and she said, "That's all I needed--I didn't know where you were."

At the farthest distance from home she decided to get off and push her bike, which makes for a pace even slower than ordinary walking. Was there a problem? No, she just wanted to walk the bike for a while. And so I resigned myself to Dementia's First Law of Caregiving, of which The Caregiver's Mirage is only a proof point: Everything is hard, and any attempt find an easy way will turn into a rebuke of your prideful nature.