My wife is in good physical condition. She could use a few more pounds and I do my best to feed her hoping she will gain some weight. I take complete care of her including bathing so I am constantly reminded we were lovers for decades. She will give me a hug and a kiss now and then but it is beyond strange that we can not make love. Dementia destroyed her and me.
Jim
Being tired has come to have more than two meanings for me. I often think I am tired. If I work hard or too long, my body grows tired. My string of days seems to go on Tempus Perpetuum. That is, the eternal protocol in caregiving is only broken by an occasional fall, or, as just happened, she dumped her breakfast on the floor.
I am so tired in oh so many ways.
Living with a person I've known for 45 years but now drastically affected by dementia I don't know what is real anymore. I know our relationship has been drastically altered and I must do almost everything for her. There are very odd moments however: I say I love you often to her and every now and then she will say I love you back usually distorted by her aphasia. Then now and then she will hug and kiss me but doesn't ever call me by my name and when I ask her if we are married she says no 99 times out of a hundred. Some life huh?
Jim
I like to think about some of the things my wife used to say to me like: "I am going to get you sexcied."
Jeanne kept me up all night but I managed to get things in order and when she said,"I, I ,I, L, L, Love you," all was forgiven.
Since the first group of people who left me to care for my wife by myself when she was diagnosed with Dementia were the hundreds of Christians we knew personally I am now areligious. I do recognize spirits, especially The Native American Spirits but I also thought I would try the tarot cards. They told me I will never find romance and love again in my life and the last card I drew was the infamous DEATH CARD.
A New Healthcare Facility opened close to us and now I can get Jeanne there with me more easily for her and my appointments.. Using our wheelchair helps me keep her safe, no more wandering, and no more pulling off my EKG leads.
I am happy about the small improvements. The facility offers real visiting nurses not just phone call checks.
They cannot improve my social life, however. LOL
Yes as my wife slowly fades into oblivion I am left with nothing more than memories of good and bad things of my life.
Still, one area offers a dim flicker of hope that emerges from some nightly dreams and impressions of fantasy. I am sure that somewhere is a woman in need of a companion as much as I am in need of one and if I could go out from this encumbrance I could find her and she could find me.
The joy of discovering one another and the beginning in sharing our lives from that moment is not dependent upon our age. These good things we will embrace are timeless.
I have been a guy with self-inflicted wounds emotionally and financially because I played into the hands of women who promised the moon but never rang my door bell. Yet the experience was not all bad. In my isolation from friends and family as a result of taking care of my wife - as total as that is - scammers did open a crack in my reality to an imaginary social life. The 24/7 caregiving leaves time within each day when reading and TV wasn't enough and any kind of conversation was better than none at all. My wife, to no fault of her own, has lost all language ability and most of her thought processes. Her responses to me are weak when positive and almost vicious when disturbed, the way many Alzheimer's sufferers behave. Having done this for years now, I have reminisced about the good things from the past ad nauseam.
"This only is also denied to God: the power to undo the past." Agathon, a Greek poet who lived in the 5th century BC.
If you are a reader of my blog, you know I take care of my wife with Dementia and aphasia along with memory loss. Diagnosed in 2017 the caregiving has been an education and an extreme stress for me. We have been married for forty years, and I stand by my promise to take care of her. It has been a rollercoaster of ups and downs and I do not have any social life: no family or friends to ease the stress and break the daily cycle that in the last several years has become something akin to the plots in the movies Groundhog's Day and Fifty First Dates.
I do not see any reason to expect an improvement, I think I have gotten used to this weird lifestyle, and things that used to keep me optimistic are fading fast.
No more working on artwork, songwriting, or thoughts of creativity. My wife always needs to be watched, guided and cared for.