Reunited...

Today the original 4 Brandts were together. We brought Mom to see Dad and he was very happy. When we announced to the staff that 'Paula was here' they started cheering and clapping. Obviously Dad had been driving them crazy about seeing Paula for the past week.

Dad told Mom, "It's been years since I've seen you." Well actually only about 4-5 months, but that probably feels like years to him. When we asked Dad to show us his room, he kept handing Mom pictures of me and Megan like a proud Dad. I do think he understood who she was and that she was our Mom. He called her "The Mom" at one point. And, while we were sitting outside, he looked at her in disbelief and said really loud, "Paula!? I Love You.!" (and he elongated the 'o' in Love) We all laughed and Mom said, "Well, thank you, how nice." :)

His mood was great and we took the opportunity to get a picture of the four of us - reunited. I also attached a photo of the four us around 1995 and the one of us 15 years later. A lot has changed.... I always find myself thinking about how different things are now... It doesn't make me sad or happy... I just find it interesting.

We also got a hold of one of Dad's family members!!! Yay. We may be able to go see Grandma Olive soon. Dad will be extremely happy about that.

I got an email from Alzheimer's.org and there was an article about taking a positive approach to Alzheimer's. And I thought... hey! We do that! All I have to say is if Dad can stay as happy as he has been the last couple of visits then we'll have no choice but to be positive. Of course I know there are bad days lurking, but Thank God they aren't all like that.

Here is a passage from the article that really resonated with me...

"We live, unwittingly, in a world of assumptions: that people will make sense; that they will do certain things; that we agree about time and place; that we can understand and be understood. But when all that unravels, where are we? My answer for Hob and me would be that we lived in an open, shifting, spacious reality where everything was undefined and totally unpredictable. "Wasn't that the way reality is anyway?" you ask. No, this felt quite different. This was a totally new experience. When I was rested and in balance, it was compelling, even exciting because it was so alive and immediate, a perpetual wake-up call to live wholeheartedly in the moment. Meanwhile, it came to me as a revelation that amidst all the losses, the essence of this man I loved was still very much present. Sometimes my own preoccupations obscured my seeing, but astonishingly there he would be the wholesome of his spirit shining through his acuity, his sensitivity, his playfulness and humor all intact."

To read the entire article you can copy and paste this link....
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marguerite-manteaurao/overcoming-the-alzheimers_b_735860.html

Hello Roommate, Goodbye Lady Friend

From the title of this blog, I'm sure you can guess what I am going to write about. This is a funny story, and I love telling funny stories about my Dad.

Megan and I visited Dad the other day because it had been about five days since we'd seen him and he had been feeling anxious. Dad's not having the best week and we can tell the moment we see him. His physical appearance and mannerisms reveal what kind of day he is having. We spotted him walking down the hall, kind of slouching over, looking into people's rooms and down at the floor. When he finally sees us, he immediately tells us that he has to take a poop and a squirt. Well, Hello to you too, Dad. Megan leads him toward his room and I run out to the car to get him a CD to listen to. He is in La La land so I'm hoping the music will wake him up a little.

I get back to the room, and Megan is standing in the doorway of Dad's bathroom holding his underwear out at arm's length and coaching him on how to finish up. We look at each other and immediately start cracking up. It's always so much better when we're visiting together, because we laugh a lot more. Megan says, "Well, I'm so glad that Dad has no problem stripping down in front of me. I just wish I didn't have to hold his dirty underwear." Let's just say that Dad's stomach was a little upset that day.

We head outside to sit in the garden and enjoy the nice weather. We bring some pictures to look at from my Wedding last year. As we're sitting there, Esther (the lady friend) comes over and sits next to Dad. She holds his hand and puts her arm around his shoulder. Like I said before, she doesn't talk. She can only giggle and say "Aye Aye Aye Aye". We found out that she has a frontal lobe dementia that has affected her speech. Dad starts talking to her and she only responds how she can and he looks at us and says, "She's kind of weird, huh? Maybe she's from across the Pond." He thinks she is speaking a foreign language! Then he says, "She must be Canadian." I thought I was going to die of laughter.

After we say bye to Dad, we talk to Lynette, the Head of Whittier Place, because she had requested that we stop by to chat. We find out that Dad is getting a new roommate who is ambulatory, very talkative, and relatively young. She thinks that they are going to be a great fit together but we're a little worried about how Dad will react and we're bracing ourselves for some tough days in the next week.

We also learned that Esther and Dad have been pretty inseparable and that the staff found her in his bed the other night!! She was dressed. He was not. I clap my hand over my mouth. Esther's husband still comes by to visit and now Lynette has to tell him this story as well. The staff separated them and have been monitoring their time together. They're actually worried that Dad is more tired lately because he is constantly walking up and down the halls with Esther--she has a lot of energy and is very clingy and antsy. Apparently he slept until noon earlier in the week! I don't think Dad has ever slept past nine, and he's usually up at seven.

All in all the day turned out to be very amusing, but Dad's not doing well this week. It's difficult for him to keep eye contact or raise his eyes high enough to look into yours. Feeding himself is confusing as well. His words kind of make sense, but his sentences don't. It's still so strange that he can be so bad one day, and then the next day he is normal, healthy, and chatting away.

Two days later, I stopped by and met Dad's new roommate, Ken. He's pretty cute and very talkative. Good cheerful personality. Dad already had some of Ken's clothes hanging in his closet. He was complaining about not having enough clothes, so I guess he went to Ken's store.

Also, Lynette informed me that Esther's husband was moving her out in the next couple days.

In the video below, Dad said that he wanted to go visit his parents and Megan is explaining why he can't do that.