Wednesday, October 17

When Cowboy and I got the church on Monday he wanted to carry in my violin.  I gave it to him and we walked the half block to the entrance to their recreation hall.  Then he got weak and started stumbling around and nearly fell down.  I managed to catch him and then a nice lady showed up with a chair.  I suspect his blood sugar was low.  He wouldn't eat at lunch except for a banana saying he was not hungry.  He sat through the program and even sang along some of the time and seemed to enjoy himself.

Today we drove to the VA center in a neighboring town and he had what I think is the last evaluation on the pending open issues.  It is unlikely we will get the 100% rating we were hoping for.  The VA does not classify dementia as being service realted.  There is a lot of evidence that it might be more prevalent in those with diabetes but not yet proven.  I got the impression we are going to stay at 80%.  The only reason I care is the tax advantage of 100% being it eliminates your property taxes.  That represents a good bit of money.  We won't know until the regional office reviews things but I suspect we have gotten all we will get from the VA in the way of benefit.

It was after noon when we were done so I stopped for us to have a bite before driving back.  We were going into the restaurant and he saw a plain navy car that needed washing and had a number of "dings" and he said "pretty car, isn't it?".  Where on earth did that come from?  I just agree and go on.  No use getting into a discussion about it.

Two nights ago he was up during the night rummaging around in my makeup drawer.  I heard him, woke up and asked him what he was doing and he said looking for some nail clippers. 

Last night he woke me up yelling "you can do it !  you can do it !  Come on, Donna, you can do it!"  Then he got out of bed and was playing with the drapes and getting back in bed and then back out and playing with the drapes and then back in bed again and back to sleep.    I have no idea what Donna he was referring to but the pianist I am working with is named Donna.

He couldn't tell the doc today hardly anything he asked but he did know his rank and the last four of his social security number.  He seems rather disconnected a good deal of the time.