Okaasan isn't running-down-the-street-crazy, which I think is one of the main mis-perceptions of dementia.
But her decisions about life's choices are often strange, because she is basing it in her memory of what is current and what has just happened. And THAT is patchy. Sometimes I think her decisions are very childlike: based on emotion and need, two things you just can't reason with.
Yesterday had two good examples.
She decided NOT to go to hula dance. Something about...I took stuff to the dry cleaners, I don't know what, but maybe I need it for hula dance....I usually wear T-shirts for hula dance? I don't have any T-shirts. No, that T-shirt isn't a hula dance T-shirt. Nor that one. Nor that one.
So she didn't go.
But she went out for a walk.
Came home at 7.20 pm. We were already eating dinner.
Um....don't heat mine yet...I have to go back to the convenience store because I have bought a magazine, but I didn't have enough money, so I said I'd come home and get it, so I must go back right now. Wait until tomorrow? No, they only had one magazine, and I want that magazine, and I bought it, but I must go back and pay for it.
Aghhh........Yujiro was already two beers down. I luckily??? was only drinking hot lemon and ginger for my cold, so I could drive. We got up from our dinners, put on our outside clothes and drove Okaasan 5 minutes away so she could pay for the all-essential magazine.
She kept apologizing, we kept saying "why don't you just leave the magazine until tomorrow, or ask the shop to put it to one side for you till tomorrow??",
But in Okaasan's logic those options weren't on the table.
She saw the magazine. She wanted the magazine. She started the process of buying it.
And, and, and, and....
Another day.
Yeah on the outside they seem so "normal", then you get these little bits and pieces that say... hmmm. something isn't right... It's hard to tell where their logic goes and what it is based on... past bits of reality perhaps.
ReplyDeleteI think increasingly that Okaasan's decisions and reasons are like a child...No, I never wear THAT T-shirt for hula, I only eat GREEN apples, I always buy THIS magazine.....there is less, grey area of decision-making....
ReplyDelete