The Next Stage

By Bud Focht

Hi, my name is Bud and I am not quite sure if I am ready to take my caregiver career to the next level, but it appears I have no choice.  I got the call. I’m going to The Show, as they say in minor league baseball. I’m going to be on the Big Stage, as they say in acting.

The Big Stage because I am afraid my wife Terry’s condition has progressed to the next stage.

‘Progressed’ is a curious word to use there. Progress usually means something good, something positive.  This is anything but.

I am sorry to say that Terry has advanced from the mild to the moderate stage of her Early Onset Alzheimer’s Disease.  I always knew this day would come, although I prayed that it wouldn’t.  It was inevitable. The meds she has been taking could only slow it down for so long.

In everything I have read, Alzheimer’s Disease is classified into stages. Some break it down to seven stages, some to three stages. They all have one thing in common. Each stage gets a hell of a lot worse. And each stage requires a hell of a lot more from the caregiver.

According to the medical journals that classify in seven stages, Terry has moved from stage three to stage four.

Other materials I have seen keep it to a basic three stages; mild/early is stage one, moderate/middle is stage two and severe/late is stage three.

If we are going by the three stage approach, Terry has moved from stage one to stage two.

This is the longest of the three stages. This is when Terry’s happy-go-lucky personality begins to change. She begins to get scared, frustrated.  Or angry.

The other day I came home from work at lunch time, as I always do for the last year or so, and Terry was crying and she started yelling at me that she hates me because I leave her alone all the time.

All the time?

I leave for work around 8 or 8:30 in the morning and am back home at 12 noon to spend lunch with her. I stay as long as I can, usually until 1 or 1:30 and I am home from work at the end of the day by 5pm. I often work at night and on weekends but fortunately this time of year I can do a lot of that from home.

When I am not home I have lists of things for her to do, to keep her busy, entertained. Do the dishes, wash up, brush your teeth, dress for the day, watch TV, listen to the radio, read the paper, call Bud.

Later that day and the next day Terry was very apologetic about what she said and told me over and over the way she really feels about me. She just really does not like being alone. More specifically, she does not like being without me. She trusts me, and needs me, to make more and more of her decisions.

I realized that it was not Terry yelling at me but the disease. I think the last time Terry yelled at me was in the 1980s. I think the last time she told me she hated me was when she was in her 32^nd hour of labor with our first child’s natural childbirth. (She didn’t really say it but I could see it in her tired eyes).

Thirty-some years later, she has begun acting in unusual ways, textbook behavior according to the journals. I realize this is due to damage to the nerve cells in her brain and it makes it difficult for her to express her thoughts, to perform routine tasks.

Some tasks about as routine as they get.

Thirty-some years ago I lived in New England for a while and there was a local plumbing business that had a controversial slogan. On the side of their trucks and on a billboard in town it said “Need Help in the Bathroom?”  Being in my early 20s I thought it was funny but after countless letters to the editor and talk radio show complaints, the company changed the slogan. Basically, they just erased the “in the Bathroom” part.

That is the part that I wish I could erase. The fact that Terry now does need help in the bathroom.

Not all the time, mainly first thing in the morning, but enough times to make me worry about our road trips. Fortunately the road trips are done for this year, and who knows what next winter will bring. I don’t even want to think about that.

For now we will try to make the most of the spring and look forward to summer when I am home even more.

The next stage. The ultimate for caregivers like me. Of the three stages this is the longest and probably the last one that I can handle on my own. I am afraid the final stage is out of my league.

Until next time, hope you can enjoy the next stage of your life.

Bud