The Joy of Alzheimer's

I keep waiting for the Muse to strike, but between my job, handling Mom, and dealing with the social life of a 4th grader, nothin' is coming to me. So I'll just give a quick update.

Madeleine is becoming quite the popular child and has discovered The Phone as a method to chat with her homies. She arranged a slumber party for Saturday all by herself. We had 5 girls and 2 boys (who just stayed for the afternoon). The door was shut for 2-3 minutes while the boys were there so Roger had to march down the hall and remind her that boys and girls are NOT allowed in a closed room. She cooked up s'mores herself for the gang. I heard her on the phone trying to arrange a sleepover at someone else's house for Saturday. She was having so much fun at the party that that she even allowed me to dance that dance where you stomp your foot. Right, now left. Three hops and reverse! Whatever that one is called. I taught the girls the Macarena and we did some weird version of the Electric Slide. Much fun! I'm humbly thrilled that she didn't give me the Look Of Extreme Rage when I joined in the dancing.

Mom is still sending money to crooks and we're still trying to stop it. On Friday I grabbed a letter addressed to a sweepstakes prize place with a $20.00 check in it. Sunday night she called, thrilled, because she just won $11,000. Dinner was cooking but I jumped in the car and went to the house.

"This is a fake check."

"No it's not."

"I've got dinner on the stove. Let me see it quick." A check was at the top of the letter, and it DID, I admit, kinda look real. It had no endorsement on the back, you know, like "Acceptance of this check will mean you're going to pay back 49&% interest blah blah." But of course it was fake. I grabbed the entire package "Here's your check for $11,000! Just send in $22.00 to claim it!! And then you'll be eligible for $801,000!! She had written on the form. "Thank you. It will be so exciting to have the money!" and had written the check for $22.00. I grabbed the whole stinking mess and ran for the car. Got home. Got a furious phone call demanding her money back. Now she's forgotten about it. Today her best friend visited and volunteered to take some letters to the post office. I called BF and told her about mom sending checks in the sweepstakes letters. She was horrified and apologetic..."There were letters to different companies." I told her no biggie, just bring me the letters if she tries that again. She added another worry:

"Your mom keeps trying to give me things. Today she offered me a silver teaspoon."

Another friend volunteered to take mom to church and said, "Ruth has given me several teacups."

So she's giving away her things to her friends. That is not a problem---her house is jammed with stuff, but it's another disturbing Alzheimer's symptom. She was prescribed the Aricept, but of course she got stomach cramps and couldn't take it, so she says. I knew this would happen.

I called the post office to ask why the forwarding order wasn't working. My sister, using her POA, filed a forwarding order to try to keep the junk mail out of Mom's hands. "We don't forward bulk mail or letters addressed to Occupant." He suggested I fax him a request to not deliver any mail to mom. So I did, decorating it liberally with words like ATTORNEY and SEVERE DEMENTIA, etc. Let's see if if helps.

Boring post, but that's what's going on around Chez Clueless. My sister's secretary is going to start going over there every day to run errands, etc. (She has finally accepted that the car isn't coming back) and we're going to install cameras to monitor. Lucky my BIL is a genius techno-nerd type.

She can care for herself and isn't really ready for an Alzheimer's unit yet, so let's hope that my sister's secretary can run errands for her and deflect the junk mail and we can keep rolling along for awhile.