Mixing Drinks...

So today's new thing: Blanche attempted to mix her Citrus flavored diet soda with fat free half and half! When I stopped her, she said she drinks it like that all the time. But I stopped her anyway because I was just thinking that cannot possibly taste good. We also went around a few times about the guys that are after her cat. These guys do not exist. It's a part of Alzheimer's called "sundowning", and as the name suggests, when the sun starts to go down, the paranoia about these guys increases. No matter what we say or do, Blanche insists we do not know what is going on over at her place. Can you say frustrating?

And our last back and forth of the afternoon involved me asking Blanche repeatedly to take a shower and wash her hair and her telling me she already did, even though her hair was very dirty. The first time she went over to her place, she came back in 4.5 minutes (I timed it), and told me she had showered and washed her hair. I asked if she actually washed it or just wet it. She admitted she only wet it. Then she asked me if she could use our downstairs bathroom and I told her no and that she had to go home and take her shower in her own house in her beautiful walk-in shower. She said she did not know that she had a walk-in shower and she toddled back to her house for the sixth time in about 20 minutes.

And at the end of the day, when Tracy came home, she had to walk Blanche over to her house and escort her into the shower in order to get her body washed and her hair cleaned. So all my efforts were for naught. One of these days, I'll figure it out. I always feel like in the moment I can make a difference. But I can't and I need to accept that and stop wasting my time.

The final event for today - Blanche picked up her night-time pill case and told me she had a broken nail and she wanted to use the pill case to fix it. So, I took the pill case from her and gave her an emery board. She used that instead, surprise, it worked better!

That's one of the things about trying to help people with Alzheimer's. It's easy to lose sight of the fact that people afflicted with this illness are still human. I find myself becoming very detached and saying things to Blanche that I normally would not say to someone not suffering from this illness. I also talk to her exactly like I would to a child. I also have started to desensitize myself to her situation and that's not good either. I need to have more patience, not less, because the situation is not going to get easier any time soon. I am optimistic that writing this daily blog will help me get things off my chest and allow me to cope better.

Thanks for reading. Until next time...