JOAN’S BLOG – MONDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2009 – SUPPORT FOR MY HUSBAND

My own emotional trauma of discovering that my dear husband’s brain had been hijacked by the Alzheimer Devil, thus turning his essence and personality inside out, and our lives upside down, has been well documented in all of my blogs.

Today I would like to give credit to my husband for his relentless refusal to go down without a fight. He is realistic; he knows what is ahead for him; he has even accepted what he is no longer able to do (except the driving – let’s not go there), and he does not frustrate himself by trying.

However, to his credit, he uses every opportunity to exercise his brain – “to keep my brain working”, as he says. He likes to grocery shop (which is good, since I hate it) while I sit in the car, because it forces him to focus on the list, match the list items to those on the shelf, and recall where the items are in the store.

He likes to empty the dishwasher  (fine with me – I’m busy working in my office) because he says it keeps his mind sharp – he has to remember where every item goes.

He knows he can learn a task that is repetitive, so I taught him, by writing down the steps, how to market my Zazzle Gallery on the computer.

As I have often mentioned, when he was managing retail electronic stores, he was the only person I ever knew who read and understood those 50 page instruction manuals. He will sit and pour over a manual, no matter how long it takes him, to learn how to master a function on his digital camera. I do not have the patience for such things. I fiddle with the camera until I figure out how it works.

He reads the newspaper every day, cover to cover, and somehow manages to remember a lot of the local news.

Unfortunately, he has not yet found any brain building use for folding laundry. (But he does it anyway.)

So today, instead of bemoaning the loss of the man he used to be, I would like to give a hug to the man who is working hard every day to hold on to the abilities he still has.

Feedback to joan@thealzheimerspouse.com

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