JOAN’S BLOG – WED/THUR, JULY 27/28, 2011 – A LESSON NOT LEARNED

In December of last year, I wrote a blog titled “The Alzheimer Rules I Have Mastered in 2010”. The three basic rules that took me 6 years to learn and master are:

Never argue with an Alzheimer patient.
My Pre-AD husband is not going to return.
I have to do everything myself.

Six years; three rules learned. As I have often said, when it comes to Alzheimer’s Disease, I am a slow learner.

This year I am struggling to master the “He doesn’t need to know how much he forgets” rule.

When my friends’ AD husbands ask them the same question for the 5th time in one day or one hour, my dear friends simply answer as if it is the first time they have heard the question. Not me. I still tell him he has already asked that question ½ dozen times that day, and I then answer it again. Sometimes, if the question has been asked within 15 minutes, after he hears my answer, he will say, “Oh, yeah, I vaguely remember that.”

Do I know that I am breaking a cardinal Alzheimer’s rule? Do I know that under no circumstances are you supposed to bring their deficiencies to their attention? Of course I do. Yet……………I cannot seem to stop myself. I certainly do not want to hurt his feelings or fuel his depression that is under control with medication. I say that I would never intentionally hurt him, but is that not what I am doing?  

What I wonder about this situation is why I cannot just let it go. Why am I not able to answer the question without commentary? I am basically intelligent (I think). I am still capable of learning. What I think is that there is a big difference between my head and my heart. My head knows and understands that he has a degenerative disease that is destroying his brain. It knows that his short term memory is almost completely gone. It knows that it is not his fault.

My heart, on the other hand, continues to break, as these repetitive questions are constant reminders of his continuing decline. Every time I am asked a question that I have answered innumerable  times in the same day, it is a reminder of his deterioration. To me, it feels as if a scab on my heart is being constantly scratched open.

In writing this, it is occurring to me that I am also angry at the entire situation. As an Alzheimer spouse, I am angry that my husband, our life together, our future, are being stolen by the Alzheimer Devil. Each time my husband is unable to do a task that used to come easily to him; each time he asks the same question for the 10th time in a day, my anger comes to the surface. Perhaps that is why I have been unable to let it go, smile, and answer as if I have never heard the question before.

I can assure you that I am working very hard on changing my behavior, as it disgusts me to think that I am hurting him because I, the healthy one, cannot control her inappropriate responses to behavior he is incapable of changing. Maybe by the time I write my 2012 New Year’s Blog, letting go of the repetitive questions will be listed in the “learned” column.

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