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I'm back to long days with Gloria.
The more comfortable she is with me, and the more she understands that I'm willing to hang in there until she can get her ideas across, the more sense she makes. Yes, she has some confusions. But the confusions are minor compared to the havoc wreaked by the aphasia. Imagine: an intellectual, a teacher, and she can't read any more, and she can't hold words or complex concepts in her mind long enough to complete a thought about them. But she hasn't lost her delight in intellectual things. Today's errand, for example, was to go to one of the bigger bookstores so she could buy a couple of science magazines. She chose Scientific American and Discover and we didn't say that they were especially good because of the pictures. And she got Flatland because she loves the book and wants to give it to someone as a present. SHe opened the book to a kind of random page and gazed at it lovingly when she lay down for a nap.
Sometimes we have to work really hard to recall a word for her, or an idea. Like yesterday we went to a restaurant and she wanted -- well, this is how it went. "I wonder if they still have that, something else?" she made a rounded gesture with her hands that looked like she was indicating a bowl. I suggested dessert. She frowned: I was close but not on it. I started listing kinds of dessert -- cookies, cake, no, no, she m,ade a gesture as spooning up something soft. Ice cream? No. We got the menu back and I read all the items. Big smile. Tapioca! Then she said it a few times but it was gone before the waitress came back. So I had to prompt her. Today we were at the same restaurant and she could almost remember the word, but the best thing was she could say "Like I had yesterday."
Before her husband died, when I was first coming out to be with Gloria, he said "She's still an intelligent woman, you know." I don't know if he was i denial about the ravages of the aphasia, or putting up a front to me, or if he was on to the thing I'm on to. Because what I see, actually, is an intelligent woman, who has had many of the basic tools of her intellect blunted, broken or stolen, who nevertheless exerts her mind to interact with the world. And I see rational thought processes even when she has erroneous interpretations of events.
The closest to delusional thinking she does is about her husband, who is sometimes divided in her mind. A couple of months ago she pointed to pictures of the young Jim and said "That guy wanted to marry me, but it didn't work out. I think it's better that way." During that time Jim was often grumpy with her and occasionally psychotic from the effects of his cancer and the treatment for it. Other times in those days she'd allow as how the young Jim in the pictures was her husband but "that guy in the room over there" was somebody she didn't know and didn't want to be connected with, though she wished him well. She was occasionally appalled that her children were talking about keeping him at the house. Today there seemed to be three Jims: her husband, the grumpy man who was sick in the house, and a stand-in that Hospice sent to the house after her husband died in the hospital (he actually died at home). SHe thought it was a well-meaning error for them to have done that and that she should have been allowed to be with him when he died in the hospital instead of having this grotesque thing in the house.
But mostly she's pretty accurate about her family, remembering things fairly lucidly, only with the words for them quite beyond reach.
The more comfortable she is with me, and the more she understands that I'm willing to hang in there until she can get her ideas across, the more sense she makes. Yes, she has some confusions. But the confusions are minor compared to the havoc wreaked by the aphasia. Imagine: an intellectual, a teacher, and she can't read any more, and she can't hold words or complex concepts in her mind long enough to complete a thought about them. But she hasn't lost her delight in intellectual things. Today's errand, for example, was to go to one of the bigger bookstores so she could buy a couple of science magazines. She chose Scientific American and Discover and we didn't say that they were especially good because of the pictures. And she got Flatland because she loves the book and wants to give it to someone as a present. SHe opened the book to a kind of random page and gazed at it lovingly when she lay down for a nap.
Sometimes we have to work really hard to recall a word for her, or an idea. Like yesterday we went to a restaurant and she wanted -- well, this is how it went. "I wonder if they still have that, something else?" she made a rounded gesture with her hands that looked like she was indicating a bowl. I suggested dessert. She frowned: I was close but not on it. I started listing kinds of dessert -- cookies, cake, no, no, she m,ade a gesture as spooning up something soft. Ice cream? No. We got the menu back and I read all the items. Big smile. Tapioca! Then she said it a few times but it was gone before the waitress came back. So I had to prompt her. Today we were at the same restaurant and she could almost remember the word, but the best thing was she could say "Like I had yesterday."
Before her husband died, when I was first coming out to be with Gloria, he said "She's still an intelligent woman, you know." I don't know if he was i denial about the ravages of the aphasia, or putting up a front to me, or if he was on to the thing I'm on to. Because what I see, actually, is an intelligent woman, who has had many of the basic tools of her intellect blunted, broken or stolen, who nevertheless exerts her mind to interact with the world. And I see rational thought processes even when she has erroneous interpretations of events.
The closest to delusional thinking she does is about her husband, who is sometimes divided in her mind. A couple of months ago she pointed to pictures of the young Jim and said "That guy wanted to marry me, but it didn't work out. I think it's better that way." During that time Jim was often grumpy with her and occasionally psychotic from the effects of his cancer and the treatment for it. Other times in those days she'd allow as how the young Jim in the pictures was her husband but "that guy in the room over there" was somebody she didn't know and didn't want to be connected with, though she wished him well. She was occasionally appalled that her children were talking about keeping him at the house. Today there seemed to be three Jims: her husband, the grumpy man who was sick in the house, and a stand-in that Hospice sent to the house after her husband died in the hospital (he actually died at home). SHe thought it was a well-meaning error for them to have done that and that she should have been allowed to be with him when he died in the hospital instead of having this grotesque thing in the house.
But mostly she's pretty accurate about her family, remembering things fairly lucidly, only with the words for them quite beyond reach.
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She's a better housekeeper than I am (not hard), and more active, in some ways.
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Having seen how much better my nervous adult students progress once they relax in class, this doesn't surprise me. Stress really depresses the ability to think clearly.
The bit about the three Jims was fascinating. Her delusion that he had died in hospital and a stand-in had been sent home is dream logic. I mean that literally. It is a logical way of looking at it and it's the way the brain functions in the dream state when not kept on the proper track by the conscious common-sense mind.
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