Yes, this is gonna be the feel-good holiday post for the ages. Timing is everything, ya know.
First of all, I may have spoken too soon about my new office building not being haunted. I've been in the ladies' room by myself on a number of occasions, and on at least three of them, a voice has spoken out of thin air. It's a woman's voice, kind of moderately pitched, and not unpleasant. The first time I swear it said "muon", which, for the record, is a subatomic particle. Most recently it said "Hello," very definitively, and then "Huh?" when I said hello back. But, I mean, it's probably not a ghost. It's a ladies' room. It's probably just sound coming through a vent or a pipe or something. Nothing to be alarmed about. Right? Right?
Second of all, Grayson the Cat swallowed a sewing needle and thread (!!). Panicky run to the emergency vet at 11pm after I'd taken my nighttime meds and shouldn't have been driving. X rays showing the needle lodged just below his esophagus. Numerous phone calls to the bank trying to come up with the $6500 deposit for the surgery he was gonna have to have. But at the last minute, a miracle occurred, and veterinarian Dr. Encarnacion decided to try endoscopy. It worked. He retrieved the needle, the thread and the nasty knot tied at the end through Grayson's throat. No surgery. It still cost us $5 grand, but was much easier on Grayson of course, and he was back to his usual self in a few days' time. (It was doubly lucky that it was a long beading needle, which couldn't fit down into Grayson's stomach and wasn't very sharp. Dr. E. had never seen such a needle before and asked me a bunch of questions about it.)
And finally, there has been a major twist in the saga of my mom, my dad, Alzheimer's disease and the long slow march to assisted living. Read on.
My dad is the one with Alzheimer's. My dad is going to 87 in March, and Alzheimer's is pretty common in men of his age (what few there are). He's in perfect health otherwise. Plays tennis three times a week, goes to the gym, lifts weights. He needs some guidance to get through his day, but he's not belligerent (fairly pleasant, actually) and he doesn't wander off. My mom is managing him.
Of late, though, my mom has been driving both me and my sister up the wall. She was diagnosed with a lung condition common to people who have rheumatoid arthritis, and prescribed oxygen. She insisted that she did not have the lung condition that two different doctors told her she had and refused to fill the oxygen prescription even as her blood oxygen started testing in the mid-80s (generally that's hospitalization and sometimes a ventilator, and she refused to do that too, of course). She has finally decided to get the oxygen prescription filled "just to make us happy." Not sure if she's actually using it.
She has also, as she has for over a year, not made a decision about assisted living. In fact, her most recent declaration was that she wasn't going to move because she felt fine, everything was great, and she was managing my dad just fine and anyway, he was not that bad. (He's deteriorating all the time, but she's trying very hard to cover this up.) Further, she has provoked both my sister and I into stupid arguments about nothing. Most recently, she told my sister she was wrong about some college football play. My sister is THE college football expert and this would be kind of like telling Einstein he was wrong about some part of the general relativity equation. My sister got so fed up she stopped talking to my mom for about a week.
Well, guess what. My sister looked into my mom's neurology records and found the most recent MRI with notes. My mom was diagnosed with vascular dementia, severe and advanced. Google it, it is quite a thing, but here are the basics. Vascular dementia is not like Alzheimer's. You don't lose your memory. Instead, you become unable to take in new information and incorporate it with what you already know. You become argumentative because, of course, people are trying to give you new information and you can't incorporate it. And you lose your ability to plan, execute plans, and even make simple decisions. What's more, it's not a steady decline like Alzheimer's. You'll coast along for a while, then suddenly drop off a cliff to a lower level of functioning. Then you'll coast along there for a while, and drop again. By our best estimate, my mom dropped off one of those cliffs around two and a half weeks ago.
In other words, she's not trying to be a miserable bitch. At least not anymore. What's going on now is really not her fault.
Obviously, this is not good news, but in a way it is. Now that we know she's not competent to manage her own affairs (or my father's, or my aunt's), my sister's power of attorney kicks in, and we don't need her agreement to do things to keep her and my dad safe. (Yes, we're seeking legal advice on that point.) We've added them to two assisted living waitlists, both of which have memory care for when needed, and it will be needed; that's obvious. We've talked to some experts who have told us how to communicate with Mom in the future. (Don't argue, just do what needs to be done and tell her, "This has already been handled" or "We're taking this off your plate".) We're getting a nurse to come in and handle their medications, which God alone knows if they are being taken correctly or at the right times (my mom was managing all that). In short, things are moving along much more quickly than they have been for years now.
And me? Well, it's been--remarkably quiet inside my head.
This may be a news flash, but your brain does not exist to make you happy. It's there to keep you alive. So one of the things it does, maybe a lot in some people and just a little in others, is rehearse worst case scenarios and plan responses. What if you lose your job? Well, the plan is to do this, this and this. What if you find out your girlfriend is cheating on you? You dump her! Oh wait, maybe not. Maybe it would be better to get counseling. That sort of thing. My brain does this ALL THE TIME. There is not a single worst case scenario that I have not considered in one form or another. (In case you're wondering what I'm planning to do in the event of civilizational collapse, the answer is "die".) And part of that is having arguments with my mother, whether she's physically present or not. It's kind of like having a little devil on my shoulder that constantly tells me I'm stupid, fat, lazy and wrong about everything, and I mentally jump up and down and scream about it. It's exhausting.
But, a couple days after the diagnosis, there was this palpable shift. It was like the little devil disappeared. Or, to use a cat metaphor, it was what Cricket did while Grayson was in the hospital. Cricket is afraid of Grayson; understandably, since every time he sees her, he tries to kill her. So Cricket pretty much lives in the back bedroom and doesn't come out. It's okay; she has everything she needs back there. But while Grayson was gone, Cricket came out, walked around, checked out the house, even touched noses with Artemis. She knew Grayson was gone and there was nothing to worry about. And that's what's happened to me. The person I used to argue with is gone, so there is nothing to argue about.
I mean, at the same time this happened, I started taking Spravato, so it's possible that's also responsible for part of the shift. But I doubt it's the whole thing. My mom is, of course, still alive. Huge challenges lie ahead. We have to tell her she's moving, for one thing, though not for a couple of months. She might throw a major fit. Or she may just shrug and say okay. But she is moving. That's the end of that story. There are medical decisions to be made and possibly a house to be sold and people we have to hire and services we're going to need and thank God, there is money; my parents have lots of money. But my sister is in charge, I'm behind her 100%, and we're gonna get stuff done. Best of all, I'm not gonna have to do it while arguing with a phantom.
So anyway, that was my Christmas gift this year. I will take it. It's a whole lot better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
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