Transitions

The thoughts have now left with the language. Words have long been transposed but they are now chased ferociously by thought, which can't seem to get out of his head fast enough. I want to hold him tight and yell into his ear, "This is not a contest!" You don't have to send your thoughts out of your head so fast! Please slow down!" A good day is when he smiles a little and sends a good morning message in his own strange code, the anxiety lessened,the worst of it a vague and constant confusion. Nothing is quite right and people and places keep changing on him. But he is generally amiable and easy to get along with. But the bad days--holy terror ride Batman! Yesterday started out as a medium day--lots of confusion and general disquiet, but no overt problems, at least none that I addressed, even to myself. Lately I have been struggling to go on with my own life, to make decisions and plans that reflect that not only is he not well--I AM! In one of our last sessions before she died, my therapist urged me to remember --in the throes of caretaking--that I was not sick. So I may very well have overlooked some warning signs in his behavior in order to honor my own need to make a few simple plans and follow through with them. All I know is that after an afternoon of light shopping and eating out for lunch, all hell broke loose on our way home. We were cruising along, within 5 miles of home, surfeited and (I thought) happy, comfortably comatose from the sugar load of the ice cream cone adventure which had ended our outing. He suddenly began shouting from the back seat. He was angrily gesticulating and demanded to be let out of the car at once. He appeared to be in full blown paranoia and very, very angry with me. I was enormously grateful for the child proof locks on the car and prayed lustily that they would work, as they had not been tested before. He kept trying to open the door and to get out, even though we were in a busy street with traffic. The car episode is of course terrifying, but even more upsetting to me was the appearance of that size rage, completely out of the blue and with no apparent trigger.