JOAN’S BLOG – THURS/FRI, DECEMBER 3/4, 2009 – HOW CAN HE KEEP HIDING IT????

There will come a time in this Alzheimer journey when I will not look like a lying drama queen, who exaggerates her husband’s AD symptoms. Last week was not that time.

As those of you who follow my blogs know, we spent Thanksgiving week at my sister’s house in Chicago. Although the house was a flurry of activity with dogs, a new baby, and various relatives, no demands were made on Sid. His only jobs were to eat, sleep, watch TV, and throw the ball for Rufus, my sister’s Energizer Bunny of Black Labrador Retriever. He managed those tasks splendidly.

I asked my sister, brother-in-law, and son, if they noticed his slow processing, confusion, and memory loss. Nope. Not really. He somehow managed to hide those deficits from everyone but me. Privately, when no one was listening, he asked me the usual barrage of questions that had been answered 3 times within the hour.

As has been his demeanor lately, he was very quiet and did not participate in the conversations swirling around him. This is a huge departure from the gregarious, outspoken Sid before AD. This was the only AD behavior that was apparent to everyone.

There was one incident that could not be mistaken as “normal”, but only our son witnessed it. My sister has a coat tree in the hallway. I took Sid’s “San Francisco” jacket to wear in the ‘windy city’. It is a unique jacket that he knows extremely well. It is beige vinyl with a San Francisco logo on the front. We always refer to it as his “San Francisco” jacket. He put it on as soon as the plane landed in Chicago, and hung it on the coat tree when we arrived at the house. One evening, as we were getting ready to go out to dinner, I came downstairs to find him wearing a blue jacket. He asked me if it was his. I was shocked, but simply said that it was not his, and handed him the correct jacket. He seemed not the least bothered by his error. Our son told me that when Sid put on the jacket, he remarked that he was not sure if it was his, but if it wasn’t, he said, “Your mother will tell me.”

Not only was I upset that he did not know his own jacket, I was upset because these incidents no longer seem to bother him. He seems content to hand over his “brain functions” to me. AND NO ONE SEES IT!

One more piece of my heart was broken off during another private incident. Someday, I will write the story of our “love at first sight” affair, but for now, I will tell you that our first date was the weekend before Thanksgiving 1969. Sparks flew; attraction was immediate; and we both fell hard. By the following weekend, the deal was sealed. We knew we were a “forever” couple. Every year since then, we have considered Thanksgiving an “anniversary” of sorts. We always reminisce about the circumstances of that first date. This Thanksgiving, there was a conversation about first dates. Out of everyone’s earshot, of course, he leaned over and asked me when our first date was. “It was in the summer, wasn’t it?” he queried. I felt as if I had been stabbed. More than anything that has happened in the last 5 years of this disease, that question emphasized in my mind how far he is slipping. AND NO ONE SEES IT.

So here I am, once again, the lying drama queen. I don’t know how he does it. I don’t know if he does it on purpose – if he consciously saves all his repetitive questions, confusion, and memory loss, just for me. I don’t know. I don’t seem to know anything anymore, except that he is making me look like an idiot.

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The Alzheimer Spouse LLC
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