Russian River Adventure Or Nightmare?

On Sunday we're leaving for the Russian River. It's in Sonoma county at Guerneville.  Beautiful place near the coast, forested with coastal redwoods, oak and bay. Wally and I have gone there a number of times cycling with our club. This year it will be Wally, me of course, Juan, the caregiver and his girlfriend. Not exactly the way we did it years ago but we are together and on vacation--of sorts.

I'm trying to whip up some enthusiasm. It's hard to do this year. The caregiver is a heavy pot smoker, his girlfriend the same. The only thing the two of them are interested in is a place to smoke weed. He does take care of Wally, and the price is affordable, you get what you can afford and try to make it work but the man is stoned from morning to night. The two of them about as interesting as Freddy the Freeloader. They talk nothing but of marijuana, it is their entire world. It drives me up the wall and when left alone with the two of them I want to scream but don't, at least not out loud. They'll have a small cabin of their own and Wally, myself and Juan will have another one with two bedrooms, fireplace and a full kitchen.

I want to read and write but I can see what is going to happen already. Juan needs to be entertained. He won't leave you alone until you pay attention to him. I don't think I'll be able to do much writing, as much as I am hoping to because he'll bug the living shit out of me until I do whatever it is he wants to do. Forget what I want to do.

I know this about him. But if Juan doesn't come, I'll have to drive the rental car myself for the entire trip there and back. The caregiver can't pass the driving test, I'm serious, failed. And if he could drive, I sure as hell don't want to be in the car with him. It's a long, long drive.

I bought an inflatable boat. It's pretty cool, I think, for a hundred bucks  to help keep Juan entertained, I'm hoping. It seats four and can hold over a thousand pounds. That's pretty cool, I think. Comes with two oars and can, if you want, have a motor attached which I'm thinking of doing when we get back to do some fishing at a local lake. That's the other thing, Juan and Beto both expressed an interest in fishing. I like to fish too, use to do a lot of it. You would think the two of them would be thrilled to have a boat to fish in.

When the boat came today, I followed the directions and blew it up, assembled the oars and readied the boat. It's about eleven feet long and  about five feet across. The material is very thick and durable, also heavy, about sixty pounds. I was pretty excited about it and in the reviews on Amazon other fishermen who bought this and mounted electric trolling motors also put in a plywood bottom. There is a bottom, of course, to the boat but it is inflatable and kind of difficult to walk or stand up on. Then they added folding camp chairs and it said it worked great for fishing.

I brought the idea up to Beto, but he was excited as a clam about the idea. He didn't really look at the boat either. Of course he just came home from work and tired but his lack of enthusiasm drained mine. And that's where I'm at right now, kind of drained.

We're going to the river, I use to be so excited about it, Fall in Northern California wine country is about the prettiest place to be, especially with a slow moving, easy river coursing its way through a valley filled with redwoods. Yet now I'm worried, is this going to be a nightmare or an adventure?  

Dealing With Dementia

It's a disease that progresses very slowly, at least that is our case. One comment that's common is, "I don't know how you do it." They mean: they find it overwhelming when you begin to talk about what you're going through. Not that the subject comes up often, but when it does, and I tell them what's going on when they ask, "How is Wally," and my answers seem to startle them, I wonder why they feel that way until I realize it didn't happen last month or last year but several years ago.

At first you believe it is a misdiagnosis because there are changes but they are not real big changes. In fact, at first, I thought, Wally isn't that bad, we can still enjoy life, go places, see movies, go out to dinner, have friends over, all the things you enjoy in life. Bridge playing, I think, was the first thing noticeable because bridge playing requires a great deal of memory, and Wally was a very good bridge player, a game he loved to play the most. So, we played Gin instead and Wally loved playing the game. We took walks, rode our bikes, gardened, went to movies, the theater, concerts and dinner, it lasted for quite a while, then card playing, any card playing began to go. The same with everything else. And when I say everything, that is exactly what I mean.

I found out today why Wally has this interest in spicy food. The food censors have began to shut down, leaving a desire for spicy foods he can taste. You're happy he enjoys the fresh hot chilies from the garden but it also means the disease is progressing to its inevitable conclusion. That's the hard part.

Facing the end, that now draws nearer, and the more things he won't be able to do is where we are at.  I'm having a hard time holding on at times. It comes and goes, like a tide, in and out, in and out, this feeling of fear and dread hits hard then leaves. It makes the rest of life, the life you have to keep doing to survive in the world, much harder. To plan anything is fraught with peril. It all can change in a blink of an eye with Wally's care. Needs that can and will come up immediately must be dealt with immediately.

 To give you an idea of what that's like, today I spent an hour and a half this morning going fifteen miles on the freeway for a root canal. I was a half an hour late but so was the dentist. Once home, I couldn't rest because bills needed paid since it was Friday, shopping for the house because now it is not just me and Wally, but the caregiver and his girlfriend who visits him on the weekend, otherwise the caregiver goes into town to visit the girlfriend. Another helper for the household who is in and out and invaluable in assisting the full time caregiver when I no longer have the strength, plus he helps maintain the house. It all costs money and time and it is all on my shoulders. So after the root canal, the traffic and paying bills it's time to get Wally up for his geriatric appointment and to stop at the feed store afterwards for a hundred pounds of chicken feed, more traffic, then dinner to fix while the caregiver does his job and I feed the animals and us. I'm tired, my tooth aches in spite of the second pain pill, and with it now getting beyond 9 P.M, I'm ready for bed. But sleep is not something I can afford. Taking a sleeping tablet is a very bad idea. If an emergency, and there has been these emergencies that happen at 3 A.M. on a Sunday morning or holiday that has occurred and I've had to deal with them, you can't be drugged or drunk or anything but awake.

 It's waking up when he is in discomfort to see why. Is the catheter plugged? His breathing normal? It goes on from there. You wake up so much that it stops bothering you no matter how tired you are. And maybe, you can take a nap now and then. They become a treasure, the naps. If lucky I can take a shower before laying down for an hour unless I'm so tired I don't care and that's, unfortunately, what usually happens.

But it didn't start this way, it took years, and you find you can do it because time smoothed the road to get there. It's why the answer always come out to: "I don't know how you do it," as, "I don't either." You don't know because you haven't thought how it got that way, you've been kept busy while all that happened.