Good days and bad days

Today's events down here at chichi no uchi were more tiring than anything else. Dad slept a lot of the day, but that's not what I mean. I'm tired. Marty's obviously tired. In terms of physical energy, I've expended almost nil since I got here—I feel fatter than ever—but I'm still wiped out.

Most days, Dad seems to have ups and downs regarding his cogency. Today there were no ups. He didn't have any bad vertigo, which is good, but was confused continually, wondering where he was supposed to be and not recognizing where he was and seemingly regressing in time but only sort of.

The most surreal part of the day was when Dad starting talking to me about me not knowing I was here. I understand that kind of thing's not uncommon among dementia patients, but it was a first for my personal experience. He didn't reveal anything I didn't already know he thought about me, but it reminded me of an exchange we had a few years ago when I finally got in his face regarding his pestering me about my dating life or lack thereof; it cleared the air, at least for a while. Today I wanted to get in his face again, but he wouldn't have understood and nothing good would come of it as it did before so I just acknowledged what he said and tried to shift the conversation away from me since he didn't know he was talking to me. When that didn't work I tried leaving the room for a couple minutes and made sure to greet him with "Hi, Dad" when I returned to jolt his recognition. That did the trick, and since it seemed to ground him the other day, we tried to watch some baseball. Or I did, rather; he kept either talking nonsense or wondering where Marty went. Or worse, where my mom was. Eventually I steered him into talking about going to ballgames with his dad in Santa Barbara and that got him onto things that were real memories and were safe (i.e. wouldn't upset me), though it did make it harder to follow the game. :)

I'm here at least through next week. After that, if there are no appointments on the books in the immediate next few days that I could assist with, I'll likely start heading home. I kind of feel badly for that, but as my friend Stacey, who has her own experience with this sort of thing, told me recently, "When you hit the wall, get back to your life. (And your cats.)" Besides, I'll be back down again before too long.

Of course, by the end of next week, gas prices might be twice what they were when I came down at the beginning of the month because of the utter stupidity/bigotry/cruelty/willful ignorance of millions of American voters. Makes me even more appreciative of my Prius and its better-than-2½-times the fuel economy of my previous car.