We Settle Down

New home, more security, some easing of financial pressures — we are both more relaxed, and it does seem to have a good effect on him. He's begun writing a new novel and it's reading well so far. No problems there with his thinking processes.

However I still have to go around after him and turn off taps, lights and the stove. And he seems more inclined than ever to forget things I have just said — to be unaware that anything has been said at all. And he is very illogical at times.

Yet, in other ways he seems to have an excellent grasp of things, and to remember a lot of stuff he needs to remember which I'd have expected him to forget. You just can't tell. My friend who described it as a 'shifting fog' was close to the mark, I think.

All in all, I think there is a very gradual deterioration but that many aspects of it have slowed right down. I think of my Dad, when younger than my husband is now, and I realise Dad was much, much worse. He had Alzheimer's of course, which is not what my husband has. But he does have some kind of dementia. I can only be thankful it's actually fairly mild and manageable.

The worst of it is his thinking that he can still do things he did when young. It's not bravado, I don't think, so much as just plain forgetting and being unrealistic. I have to be quite insistent sometimes about getting it through to him. He wanted to hitch-hike interstate to attend a family funeral he felt he should be at. He's over 80! I felt quite brutal as I pointed out that he needs a good rest if he just goes out for half a day.

Luckily he soon forgets both my laying down the law and his own impractical ideas.