Roller Coasters

I spent three days in hell. Thoroughly spent. Unable to cope in a healthy way with his total cognitive loss. And I mean the kind of loss that thinks wiping your butt after pooping is accomplished by polishing your knee. But somehow, with lots of reaching for good friends and a therapist, I once again reached a kind of stasis. Now, I have learned through experience that just when you relax your vigilance with this disease, bad stuff happens. Sure enough. After a fairly nice day of not feeling my own raging anger, and after the honeymoon glow of absence of anger, he erupts in huge paranoia , rage, and distrust of his own....over nothing that can be seen by a rational mind. This whipsaw effect of going from my own mind blowing rage stage, to a kind of acceptance and calm, only to be blindsided by his huge rage two days later is unsettling. This time I remained reasonably calm and we had another fairly pleasant day. As we sat on the couch, he remarked, "Oh, do you watch this show too?" I answered yes, and my first thought was that maybe he had already seen it during the day, while I was taping it. But something felt odd. I turned off the TV and asked him who I was. He pondered for a moment, then said he wasn't sure but he thought I was probably a teacher. The rest of the evening we spent with his remembering people we had known briefly and casually thirty some years ago, but his memory of our relationship never returned. He told me he thought I was a wonderful person but that was all he knew. I would like more balance in my life and I can sure do without the ups and downs of the vagaries and vulgarity of Alzheimer's. But the irony and unfairness of memory is awful. He remembers a man we met maybe five times, thirty seven years ago but can't place the woman he has lived with for forty five years. Sigh.....