The Funny Farm

 Arrived!  There’s a delay in posts to the blog because there’s no wi-fi here. I’ll do my best with this early in the morning. Also, I decided not to send out the link until I arrived.

We got here Sunday late afternoon and Alene, Abbey and her friend Deena were waiting. Abbey and Deena left very early Monday morning for Alabama where Deena lives.  Abbey will fly back to Denver on the 18th.

Alene looked very tired and a bit disheveled…she cried.

We had dinner, visited and went to bed.  We were all up early Monday; Abbey and Deena left and Alene and I just talked and laughed until we decided to go into town (Ogalalla) for some groceries. The FF is 25 or so miles from town but we cross over the dam and it’s scary how low the water is. Also visible from the road is some of the damage that the tornado caused a couple weeks ago as well as damage from a recent hail storm. Alene said she’s got 22k in damage to the back of this place from hail.

Now to Alene:

On the plus side-there haven’t been any angry outbursts or fits of frustration…yet. 

She can and does take care of herself with regard to dressing herself and her personal hygiene. Of course she feeds herself but she’s known to end up with food on her blouses; I think this was true even before dementia. ☺

On the down side-she is confused much of the time. There are endless repeated questions. I’m okay with it because I think I’m a pretty patient person. She’ll preface questions sometimes with “I know I’ve asked you this…”.   She can’t remember the answers.

There were two endless questions yesterday. Both related to DanaRiley. “How did you get her?” and “How old is she?” Yes, there were many other repeated questions but those two were asked 15-20 times. 

Alene told me yesterday she doesn’t know her age or the year she was born. She then sheepishly said she didn’t even know what year we are currently in. Even when I told her a couple of times how old she was, I’d ask her an hour later her age and she didn’t know. 

Abbey has noticed, and I got a glimpse yesterday, that Alene is losing the concept of money and even has a tough time counting it. Dan the mower man came by to collect and she pulled all of her money out of her wallet and seemed confused so she just grabbed a handful of bills and gave it to him. I would’ve said something but he had that money in his pocket so fast! He had a better perspective on the amount she gave him from where he was sitting. I told her later that she gave him, from what I saw $2-300 dollars. She disagreed and then said she owed him for the last mow and likes to pay him in advance and he’s such a good guy and would do anything for her any time of day or night.  I begged her to not let him take advantage of her.  I’m sure she’s forgotten the conversation.  I’m also convinced that if he came back today, she’d pay him again.

Abbey told me her dementia is worse when she’s tired so I won’t be waking her. She can sleep past noon if she needs to.  

I’m going to take it day by day to determine if we make the trek to Southern California.  I want to but I’m worried that the unfamiliar surroundings may be too much for her.  It’s too early to tell. She says she wants to go which may be half the battle!

Hopefully I cans post again tonight.