Grandpa visits the doctor

We took him for his annual physical last month. His doctor is a very kind, capable internist that I have known through his patient referrals to surgery for many years. It's important to have a good consistent relationship with a physician of record, so that if Grandpa ever needs a hospitalization for something like a hip fracture, the internist can help coordinate his care.

We were concerned that Gpa had been getting very restless at night, getting up to change his clothes, go through his drawers, rearrange everything in the room, even venture outside to check on the moon. Dr Thibert recommended going to a higher dose of Aricept, as this could help with the agitation that drives night wakenings. Now that it has had a chance to work in his system, it's had the desired effect and Gpa is sleeping much better. Also, putting him in Depends was a good idea as they are wet in the morning, meaning that Gpa would be having accidents without them and getting up to change clothes and bedsheets all night.

While waiting for the doctor, Gpa looked at the eye-chart without his glasses on and reported "My eyes are starting to do bad things". So Vince asked him to put his glasses back on and voila! a magical cure of the 'bad things'. Gpa laughed at the result.

At the visit, when Dt Thibert asked him how he was feeling, Gpa replied "I'm feeling cute!"

Welcome to The Mighty Grandpa

If you are a new visitor, welcome! If you are a returning regular (hi, Jamie!) then welcome back! This note is just a reminder that there are more posts than pages, so when you get to the bottom of this page, click the button at the bottom for ''Older Posts". There is some great artwork there.



I want to give a shout-out THANK YOU to dear cousin Mary Ellen, who has been an immense help to us over the years of having Grandpa live with us, since she can tell us what Aunt Jane's Alz course was and what to expect with Grandpa as he travels the same path. You da best, Mary Ellen!

Grandpa and Food

Food, glorious food. Oh, he loves it! So very much. And it's not an emotional attachment so much as it is something to do, something for his mind to get lost in, something to enjoy. And enjoy it he does - over and over!

He can't remember that he has just eaten. This is odd, but he doesn't seem to have a mechanism for appetite satiety. Even after a very big, abundant, glorious Thanksgiving meal, he will come back after the dishes have been done, wondering if anyone will ever feed him? Ever?

He also has no sense of smell, which will reduce one's ability to taste, but doesn't seem to affect his food pleasure at all. And he is not gaining weight, so I don't know where he puts it.

Today he brought out his plate after finishing a lunch of salad and sandwich. He asked us, while holding the plate: "Will there be any lunch on offer today?" "Grandpa, you just finished your lunch." "Oh? No, that wasn't me! Someone else must have eaten it!"

We take care to feed him as often as he asks, and anticipate his requests by preparing many meals for him in advance. He has a drawer full of soups in the kitchen, something easy for the boys to prepare for him when they watch him. He can't figure out how to prepare anything for himself - would never peel a banana, for example. However, he has come up with some interesting sandwich combinations: Vince caught him heading out the door with a sandwich full of raw chocolate chip cookie dough! He was quite disappointed to have that one confiscated.

Here's an interesting creation that Vince found him concocting today when he heard him rummaging around in the kitchen: into his cup of sweet tea he had placed a little bit of each of the items we had prepared for him in advance: chopped apples, chopped ham, and some salad. I guess this looked like soup to him.

We like to make sure everything is healthy, well balanced. When Janine and Jimmy visited a few years back, Janine left us her bag of granola. Thanks, Janine! I made Grandpa many, many fruit parfaits over the next year with your granola as a topper (fruit, yogurt, drizzle of huckleberry syrup, and sprinkle of granola). He really enjoyed that, and I loved thinking of you every time I opened the bag!

Jamie and Jody have sent him Christmas gifts of English muffins and jams in the past; this has been very thoughtful and useful, thank you Jamie and Jody!

We have to be on the lookout as well for what he does with unfinished plates. Vince goes through his room daily and has found some funny stow-aways: for example, here's a photo of when Grandpa took his unfinished burrito, wrote his name on the tortilla in red marker, and stashed it in his drawer.

Half-finished sandwiches have also been found in his medicine cabinet and among his socks. If we aren't careful with the laundry, they will go through the wash in his pockets as well.

He does interesting things with food. He can't figure out what to do with the blueberries in his oatmeal, for example, so he will arrange them in rows at the bottom of his bowl.

Or organize the pasta noodles in a row, by descending order of shape and size.

If he only wants half a bowl of rice, the remaining rice will be piled up in a neat little wall, filling exactly one-half of the bowl.

Grandpa remains at heart a very thoughtful and generous person. When he comes up with an interesting concoction, he will offer to share it. Like the time he spooned strawberry jam all over his scrambled eggs at a restaurant, then offered to share it with everyone. Or, maple syrup over the hash browns. "Here, want some?" He means it quite sincerely.

When he moved in 5 years ago, he was all about coffee. Coffee, coffee, coffee. We bought him a special pot to make and hold hot water (otherwise he would run water in the sink until hot, then put it in the microwave to heat up some more. He would forget what he was doing and go away, leaving faucet running, once for hours). The water heater went through so many cycles that it got worn out and needed replacing! We set aside a special coffee drawer for him, and hunted for decaf coffee in the grocery stores (hard to find).

Then we realized that all this coffee-making was really just a ploy for sugar. Sugar, sugar, sugar. Like a hummingbird. We had to limit his sugar intake to 1/4 cup daily in the sugar bowl. Since he doesn't brush his teeth unless prodded, I didn't want to see him lose his natural choppers under our watch! For the same reason, I don't indulge his old love for Snickers bars or Juicy Fruit gum, though I think of him every time I see those for sale.

So, Vince became the Sugar Guardian, and Grandpa got inventive. When the sugar bowl was empty, he'd stir in some jam, maple syrup, honey, anything else from the baking-supplies cabinet. We had to move those items out of the kitchen. For a while, it was difficult for me to bake anything, as I couldn't find my ingredients ("Brown Sugar? Look down in the garage, honey!")

Now, Grandpa's forgotten the sugar habit, and the coffee additive, and the teabags (I've got a great collection of those for him too) and often just goes for some hot water. So far, though, he's been safe with that - no major spills. Even with Linus in his lap, looking for handouts.

If it sounds like our kitchen has been modified for Grandpa, it has. He moved in just when we were finishing our kitchen remodel, and were able to make design changes to accommodate him. For example, I knew from watching him in his mobile home that he would leave the gas stove on, so we chose a magnetic induction cooktop that would not be a fire hazard if left on. And we set aside drawer space just for him when we were setting up our new utensil storage configurations.

Grandpa is a great help with grocery shopping and prep work. He loves to feel useful (don't we all?) and is an eager assistant. At the food store, he pushes the cart around, following closely - sometimes too closely - ouch! Everything I put into the cart gets rearranged by him several times so that it lies just as he thinks it should. At first this bothered me, but it's just him fussing as he loves to do, and while he's busy with that, I can check out the rest of the aisle without him hitting my ankles with the cart.

If the ankle-bumping routine gets too much (ie, in the produce section, when I'm constantly changing direction to look at items), I can take him to get his hair cut in the Hair-Masters store right next to the Safeway; they know him well there and take good care of him, and that gives me time to get the fruits and veggies loaded, then go pick him up for the rest of the shopping. And the pharmacy is right there as well; we always wave hello to the phriendly pharmacists Rick and Wendy who refill his meds monthly.

I will buy dozens of cans of soup when on sale, and he is amazed when they fill up the cart ("My goodness! What a selection of things!") But he doesn't get to choose the flavors, as that is just too confusing for him ("What would you like, Grandpa?" "Ummm... well... what would YOU choose?"). This is common in Alzheimer's patients; Mary Ellen Corrick prepared me for this when telling me about Jane's course with the disease. Choosing is stressful; they are much happier when something is chosen for them, and both he and his sister have been very trusting in this, since they have/had confidence in their caretakers. Also true at restaurants).

At the checkout line, he is a great help in unloading items on to the conveyer belt. At first it bothered me that he carefully set the soup cans all with their labels facing forward, but the checker praised him for this, saying it helped her with barcode scanning. So now I let him fuss with the organization on the conveyer belt, while I make sure I've got my coupons and such all ready. We shop a lot, often with full carts, sometimes even two carts- remember, I'm feeding three teenagers, plus one who eats MORE than a teenager!

The checkers know Grandpa, and worriedly ask after his health if I go shopping without him. The bag boys knows I've got Grandpa to help load the bags in the car and sends us off with a wave. At home, he's a great help with unloading, though sometimes the house is completely foreign to him when he arrives, and he has forgotten where the kitchen is or where his room is (hey, Grandpa, don't put the potatoes in the closet, let's put them out here in the kitchen).

In the summer, I take him to as many farmer's markets as I can - they are lovely. We take him blueberry picking as well - quite a lovely outing!

Kitchen prep: Grandpa is still safe with knives, and a big help with chopping veggies! During green bean season I will buy bagfuls from the farmers market and he will gladly prep them for us. This is such a big help, and he doesn't whine that "I did it yesterday, why don't you ask someone else?" like one of my sons might. However, he doesn't remember just HOW to do it from one day to the next, and needs constant reminding. For example, for bell peppers, I will chop some in the dice size I want, and ask him to shop up the next pepper just the same. He will follow that example so carefully, and will lay the diced pieces out in a neat row when done.

Unfortunately, we can't let him help with dishes. He can't tell the difference between clean and dirty, and gets overly creative in choosing where to put things. We may never find some things again. Here is a fork that he stashed in the paper towel dispenser:

All these things - the care and feeding of the Mighty Grandpa Dear- are a big way we show him that he is loved and cared for, and he can show his love in return, by helping us with these tasks. This is also a reason why we don't want to put him in an Alzheimer's facility just yet. They won't feed him as well or as often as we do. I would miss taking him shopping - and the entire store would miss seeing him.