Help! Help! She's Trying to Kill Me!!!

Yes, that is what I heard tonight from my upstairs office. Preceding this was a combination scream/maniacal laugh coming from Blanche. I really could not tell which it was supposed to be. I calmly walked downstairs to find Blanche sitting on the couch clutching Tracy's hand. Tracy was telling her to let go of her hand, but Blanche would not do that. So I looked at her and said, "what's the matter?" Blanche did not respond to me at all, and finally Tracy was able to free her hand. So Tracy said to her, "I'll heat up a piece of pizza for you and we're going over to your house so you can eat it over there, okay?"

And Blanche responded with "oh I don't think so. I can just imagine what you're going to put in it." Blanche had calmed down once I came downstairs, but after Tracy heated up her pizza and sent her home, she told me what had happened. Tracy was attempting to lead Blanche back over to her apartment because she was wandering around, looking through our mail and generally being a nuisance as Tracy and I were both trying to work on this snowy Friday. (She's a nuisance because she just asks the same questions over and over and over and over, well, you get it.) That's when Blanche flipped out and actually tried to bite Tracy's hand! Tracy held her off and that's when Blanche screamed for me to help her because Tracy was trying to kill her! So that's definitely a new thing and I hope it doesn't last too long.

Yesterday, the doctor started Blanche on medication for her afternoon paranoia, but I'm not sure how long it can take to make a difference. The behavior does seem to be escalating. It starts earlier in the day, so hopefully when we change the caregiver's hours to 1 to 4, instead of 11 to 2, it will give me that additional couple of hours so I can continue to work. Once Blanche starts banging on the door, whether it's 2 p.m. or 4 p.m., my workday is done. She simply requires constant attention because we don't know what she will do when she is in our house.

After she ate her pizza and came back over, it was as if it had never happened. So there we were, Tracy and me, still stewing over this new, big incident, and Blanche had no idea it had even happened. Welcome to our world...