Back to Reality

by Bud Focht

Hi, my name is Bud and after spending a week where they filmed Fantasy Island my wife Terry and I now have to return to reality.

In the 1990s, the R&B divas En Vogue sang:

Back to Life, Back to Reality

Back to the here and now

Show me how, decide what you want from me

Tell me maybe I could be there for you

However do you want me

However do you need me

Back to life, back to the present time

Back from a fantasy

We just enjoyed a true fantasy come true in Kauai. Beautiful surroundings, relaxed atmosphere, and no worries. It has been a long time since we had no worries.

Terry and I went to high school and college in the 1970s, so we spent our worry-free innocent years in the turbulent 1960s.

Terry might be the only person diagnosed with Early Onset Alzheimer’s Disease who is still in her innocent years. “I’m a good girl I am” has always been one of her favorite sayings, quoting Audrey Hepburn with a Cockney accent from the movie My Fair Lady.

Life in general was anything but innocent in the 1960s, with the assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK, the war in Viet Nam, the race riots in Mississippi, Watts and Detroit.

That is why all of the television shows in the 60s were pure fantasy. The evening news had nothing but bad news, so the rest of the television schedule dealt with everything but reality.

Fantasy shows like the Twilight Zone, Star Trek, Time Tunnel, Adams Family/Munsters, Mr. Ed (“Willlllburrrr”), Batman, I Dream of Jeannie (the first belly button I ever saw on TV), the Flying Nun, (she looks like Terry) and Bewitched.  Not exactly reality TV. And of course my favorite 60s shows were the ones that made fun of the sad state of affairs, Laugh In and the Smothers Brothers.

Reality in the 1960s sucked, even before you could say “sucked” on TV.

So now Terry and I are back in reality, hoping it is a while before it really starts to suck. As comedian Ben Stiller said in the movie he directed, “Reality Bites.”

People always ask me how Terry’s medicines are working, if they are helping. I used to say that it is really hard to tell. Usually when someone takes medicine it makes them better and you can see an improvement.

Unfortunately, that is not the way it works with Alzheimer’s. There is no getting better, no improvement. You just have to hope the meds slow the progress down. (progress doesn’t seem like the right word. The disease is progressing, but Terry certainly is not).

But now I think the meds are working, because Terry can still do things. She is still able to work, and she can still drive to a few local places, as long as it is day time.

But her independence is shrinking. She is beginning to have trouble writing in her memory book (a combination diary and daily planner I have her write in and read every day to help her remember things). Her decision making process is getting closer to that of a squirrel in traffic.

We came home the other night and she turned the light switch on in our bedroom, but only the ceiling fan came on, not the light. She didn’t know what to do, couldn’t figure out to pull on one of the little chains that hang from the light that control the fan and the light. We’ve had that fan for 20 years.

On our recent trip Terry never left my site. I’d walk her to and from the bathroom and wait right outside for her. (Funny word, bathroom. She wasn’t taking a bath in the airport or at the beach. She was using the restroom, the loo, the water closet, the lavatory, the latrine, the head (Navy term) and of course my favorite term for the toilet, the crapper). And speaking of crapper, Thomas Crapper did not invent the toilet as some people think but he was a plumber around the turn of the 20^th century who made his fortunes selling toilets. His product was known as ‘The Crapper.’   It was just a coincidence, however, that a slang word for feces is “crap”. That comes from the French word “crappe” which means waste or rejected matter, not from ‘The Crapper’. (I know a lot of shit about the shitter.)

We’re hoping that it is still a ways off before our lives go into the crapper, when this horrible disease worsens.

In October we go back to the neurologist. It will then be one year since he first saw Terry and realized something was wrong. He will give her similar tests to what he gave her last October, and we’ll then know how progressive the disease is (there’s that word again). Then we will know how the meds are working.

And then we may also know how soon it is going to be before things get crappier. That might get a little too real for me.

But we are very thankful we had our fantasy last week. We have plenty of pictures and souvenirs to help Terry remember for as long as she can the great time she had in paradise.

As we try to make the transition from paradise back to reality, I am reminded of a band that is on Terry’s iPod, Coldplay, and the song they sing, Paradise.

Life goes on, it gets so heavy

The wheel breaks the butterfly

Every tear a waterfall

In the night the storm night she’ll close her eyes

In the night the storm night away she’d fly

And dream of Paradise

We can only dream of Paradise now, as we return to reality.

Until next time, don’t let reality bite. Find your paradise and fulfill your fantasy.

Bud