"Clare"

“Clare”

The school year of 1948-49 had ended. I had just finished my first year of school at Carbon College (College Of Eastern Utah) in Price, Utah, and had returned home for the summer. I found a good summer job working as a carpenters helper on the crew that was constructing the Uranium Mill in Monticello. Life was good! I liked the job, the pay was great, and I was looking forward to returning to College for my sophomore year and playing basketball again.

Somehow I ended up at a dance being held in the Monticello High School Gym. That wasn’t unusual. Dances were our big entertainment activity. We rotated between the dances the High Schools in both Blanding and Monticello held, the ones the church held, and the wedding receptions that were always dances. Someone was holding a big dance almost every weekend. We danced at the two high school gyms, in the basement of the old brick church, on the outdoor cement slab at the Relief Society Building, and on the slab at the Dude Ranch.

Everyone came out. There was little dating and we found a new partner for every song the band played. There was always a live band and we loved to dance to the songs of the big bands of the 1940’s. Dances were our social life.

I was dancing with some beautiful girl,( I don’t remember who, but I never danced with homely ones) when I saw Shirley across the floor. Shirley Nielson was my younger step-brother. We always got along very well but Shirley had one glaring problem that I exploited to its fullest whenever possible. He was was the most bashful guy in town! I could turn him beet red if I got him right, and he knew it

Shirley was dancing with a tall, slim, auburn haired girl, who had freckles on her nose, flashing green eyes, and a contagious smile. I thought she was vey attractive.

I had never seen the girl before, neither had I ever seen Shirley dancing before. I couldn’t resist the opportunity before me. I steered my partner over toward Shirley. “Hey Shirley”, I called from a little distance away, “who’s your girlfriend?”. “Clare” he said, ducking his head. I had him….he was turning deep red!

“Hi”, I said to her, then turned my partner and danced away.

Claire, 2009

July 22, 2009
It seems that the best way to keep all of you aware of what is going on with Mom is to establish a Blog report where we can all keep track of her progress. Along with a regular status of her health I am going to send pieces of her and my history together. Most of all I want you all to understand what is happening to Mom and how you can best deal with it.
It was about 6 or 7 years ago that Karen first said to me, “Dad’ you need to get Mom into her Doctor and check her memory”. Independently at about the same time Jeanne said the same thing to me.
As we were getting out of the car ready to go to an appointment with Dr. Bair in Mesa, I approached the subject with Mom. She didn’t react well, as you all would suspect, but did talk to her doctor. He had his office receptionist give her about a 10 question test where the girl read a statement and asked Mom to repeat it. Stupid test! Of course she passed it.
You know Mom…”there is nothing wrong with my memory”!
By the time we moved to St. George, all of you kids were echoing the same thing, “Dad, do something about Mom’s memory”.
I finally got her to talk to Dr Jones, her doctor here in St George. It was a hard sell. He suggested that possibly Mom was getting old.
About 2 years ago we went in again to talk to Dr Jones about Moms memory. Dr Jones is a DO and had a student with him that day. Lucky us! I wasn’t going to let him just pass Mom off, and the student started asking some questions. Suddenly we had a prescription for Aricept.
Mike and Gail got Dr Amber involved. They spent an afternoon at the Cabin last summer and you could see Dr Amber’s observation of Mom. He talked to her about her memory and suggested that she may be having mini-strokes that would affect her memory. Mom took to that idea. It gave her a reason her memory was bad other than some other personal fault. Dr Amber scheduled her for a brain scan.
My heart sank when he did that. I knew what he really suspected and wasn’t surprised when he told me what they had found. He added Namenda to her regimen. She is still on those two drugs.
Aricept is the standard drug for Alzheimer’s. It does slow down the disease growth. Namenda is kind of like a happy pill for patients. It mellows them so they don’t get violent.
Where are we today?
Mom’s memory is steadily deteriorating as we expect it will. Most noticeable is her inability to remember what was just told her a few minutes ago. She will repeatedly ask me what day of the week it is for example.
As you would expect, she repeats herself often but we all do that! She remembers the past very well and can carry on a conversation most of the time with people who would never suspect her of having Alzheimer’s. She still drives herself to the grocery store and even across town to shop. We are trying to slow that down, I go to the grocery store with her, and try to anticipate when she needs to shop but she doesn’t like me to take her shopping. She wants to take her time and having a husband around doesn’t make her comfortable about taking her time ( Yeah.. I know..you all agree with her)
She has her debit card and takes care of her money. Thank goodness for electronic banking, I check her account almost every day.
I do most of the meal planning and cooking. (I love Marie Calendars frozen dinners.) I try to get her out of the house at least once every day. Sometimes it’s just up to McDonalds for a soft ice cream, but her favorite, is to ride over to Cotterwood and check out the progress of the house. Here in Payson we go shopping for groceries most every day. That’s deliberate on my part as it does get us out.
She takes a lot of pride in her house as always but she doesn’t deep clean as she used to. She wants no help except that I vacuum. She gets security from her home and keeping house.
Mom can’t handle abstract reasoning or multiple tasks anymore. She also has a lot of trouble with directions. For example: If you ask her to get you a screwdriver from the bottom drawer of the toolbox in the garage, she will come back empty handed and confused. If I ask her just to get me a screwdriver, she will stop and want more information. This behavior translates to everything going on around her. It’s sort of like living with an 8 year old who has a driver’s license and a credit card. You better be paying attention.
She is still concerned about me and how well she is taking care of me. She still works hard at it. However she is becoming increasingly dependent on me as she loses confidence in her ability to remember things. She uses me as her memory bank.
I have control of her drugs so we don’t worry about the biggest problem older people have; overdose or underdose. Hope my memory holds out!
When you visit with her be careful about:
Asking multiple answer questions
Asking for her opinion
And Please…. Don’t ever let me hear the phrase, “poor Dad”, I am happy to be there to take care of my best friend.
I’ll write again in a few months