How do I get here

I thought I had book marked my Blog page but when I click on it All I can do is read it but not post
As it is I got here by random clicking

See my previous post about showering, I was wrong. I now ask her if she wants me to keep the shower running and she says "No"

A friend rang last Saturday. Its funny how your wife can make a liar out of you. I had emailed our friend to tell her that in my wifes eyes I now had a dual identity "Steve" and "The other guy" or "the other Steve". In any event,when she rang I was "Steve" (her husband)

While they were talking I went around the house looking for "hidden" objects. I found six shirts ,a pair of trainers (in the drawer under our bed)and a box of her "memory" pills

Maureen sometimes decided she wants to go next door for a coffee or go next door to excape the nasty man in our house. I go after her in a little while hoping that by the time I get there, I have turned from Mr Nasty to Steve. Most times I have but sometimes she will refuse to come home telling our neighbours how horrible I am and that she wants me out of the house. I have to promise to pack my bags before she will come back home

In order to prevent the scenes I have taken to locking the front and back door and I say I dont have a key. She can become really distressed and bang on the front door for maybe ten minutes hoping that someone will "rescue" her. Am I saving her distress or am i saving the neighbours from having to deal with her or am I saving my own face.

I saw a local authority social worker two weeks ago. I have to give all the details of our life
(a) so that Maureens downward march is on record against the day when local authority intervention (a home or a part time/full time professional carer) is needed
(b) to establish whether she thinks Maureen could benefit from and be accepted on the list of a local support group or a local organisation called Crossroads which provides someone to come sit with Maureen to give me a break

The latter seems to be the case but I dont expect much before  Christmas

In the mean time every day is up and down. I think Maureen would go shopping every day. I sometimes say we go shopping for foodstuff to throw out.

Things that happen but not every day
1. We have three dogs (we actually have two)
2. People come to the door and try to force their way in
3 Other people come to stay,sometimes two sometimes more
4 A girl is in the house. The people at 3 and 4 are never actually in the room or the house when she mentions them
5 She will go upstairs at night/late evening to check if anyone is in the other bedrooms
6. we have "lost" a dogs coat and three dog leads
7.she will do  ironing and ask me which are Steves shirts and which are mine

just so many things

Maureen has a "thing" about keeping stuff safe That can mean she hides my wallet if she sees it lying around. she will do the same with keys - front door,back,neighbours spare keys,car keys. It can be very frustrating when you want to go out , to not be able to find the keys. And I cant ask her because I know she will deny hiding them. I thought she had stopped taking a shower and washing her hair but the penny finally dropped one morning whenI I asked if she wanted me to run her shower. She as forgotten how to use the shower controls This morning she wanted to wash the dogs after their walk and she told me the sink wouldnt hold water. Thats because she was placing the filter trivet over the sink hole instead of the sink plug. Seeing me as a visitor and askning me when her husband will be home ,is a regular daily event. I walk the dogs every morning but I get abuse when I come home "Where the bloody hell have you been all this time. I dont want anyone walking my dogs" She would never have used this kind of language to me,and she sees me walk out with the dogs every morning So many small things that add up to an unhappy life for us both. We went shopping yesterday. I gave her the shopping list and said "I have to go to another shop for one thing. So you carry on and start getting the stuff on the list. i will catch you up." When I rejoined her she was just waiting with no shopping. She went to use the car yesterday but she could open the garage door because she had forgotten the remote control. And when she got in the car she tried to start it using old keys. ( she had hiddenthese keys and we had to have them replaced and recoded) Its hard to feel affection or be cheerful when you know that sometime in the day you will be verbally abused and told to "bugger off" or that you cant sleep in your own bed or (as ttoday) "you sit on your arse boing bugger all all day and you wont even come to the shops with me to get dog food you are a nasty horrible man"

Monday follows Sunday

M rang the local pub to ask if I was there . I was actually at home when she rang but she was asking after her husband and not "the other guy" ( me ,sitting in the living room)

Then she rang my daughter who is two hours drive away. My son in law told her that I had been there but I was now on my way home. He hadnt thought it through because my wife decided she was going to wait up till her husband got home.  It was almost 11 at night. When I reminded her it was a two hour drive and in the dark,she said she didnt mind.

I was told I could sleep in one of the spare bedrooms. So of course after I had put the light out and fallen asleep I was woken to be told in a loud voice that she had been waiting up for me for the last hour and it was totally selfish of me to come in and go  straight up to bed. She also wanted to know why I was sleeping in the spare bedroom.

Dont go away

Ok thats it , Im sticking with this Blog

but this entry wont be long ( so I lied in my last Post)

This afternoon M wanted to take the dogs (2) out for their afternoon mooch around. That meant she couldnt leave me alone in the house - dont forget that sometimes Im me (her husband) and sometimes Im "the other guy"

So I said "Ok I will get a little excercise and take a cycle ride while you walk the dogs"
She very unwillingly accepted this because she didnt want any possible damage done to her husbands bike.
I wasnt really dressed for the weather and instead of going towards town where there is more shelter,I headed out into the wide open spaces.  And when it rained I got very wet. I stood up under a tree and got home an hour later.
I was locked out and although I keep a back door key on me now ,she had put a spare key in the lock frm the other side.

She refused to let me in but then relented.

Does this mean Im going to have to hide all the keys.

Ive left her car keys lying around and thats a bit stupid because her licence has expired and she is not named on the Insurance policy on the car. She actually did receive a reminder about renewing her licence . It arrived around the same time she got a letter saying "in view of your recent dignosis of dementia we strongly advise you not to drive"

I threw the reminder in the bin before she saw it (so her licence lapsed)

She threw the "dementia" letter in the bin declaring that there was nothing wrong with her. The letter was insensitive and inaccurate - she had been diagnosed with Alzheimers Disease  some 20 months previously

I will gradually catch up on previous "events"

Ooooops

I'm particularly useless at this Blogging thing

I started this Blog ,then when I couldnt access it I started another. Now I cant access the other

Im sorry if you are reading this for the first time because I really have to go in search of the other Blog otherwise I will be posting in two.

I started the Blog as a way of "plotting" my wifes decline.
That may sound Mmmmmm I dont know what it sounds.
I just know that if I look back a year ,things have changed but dont ask me to say when changes take place because one day merges into the next.

But changes there are....

If and when I find the "other" Blog I will come back and post a link to it

If not then my next entry here will be a pretty big summary of how we got from "I think there is something wrong but I cant put a finger on it" to "Every day there is some incident"

Do I repeat myself

If I do its because I dont read what Ive written before when I open a new post
And because there are so many similarities between events its hard to remember what happened on a particular day

Although things do seem to go in cycles. Maureen says that the worst thing she ever did was to move here. Then she will say we were lucky to get this house. Then she wants to move back south but its too late to do anything about it now. And besides she couldnt do it on her own
Its nice of me to come and visit but she couldnt ask for my help to move,

Apparently she was moved up here by her eployer when she was a teenager , and she has regretted doing nothing about moving back when everyone who moved here with her moved back

The Community Nurse paid her annual visit to us last month and gave Maureen the standard "Intelligence" test. Last year she scored 21/40. this year it was 16/40
The following week we got a letter to say that in view of Maureens recent diagnosis of Dementia they strongly recommended that she shoulnt drive.
First of all Maureen was diagnosed 20 months ago, and it struck me as insensitive to write to a Dementia/Alzheimers sufferer ( who denies the fact) in this way. Talk about stir things up. Maureen tore the letter up.
I dont have the heart to tell her that her driving licence has expired and she is no longer insured.

So what else has happened>

Maureen will start (as she did ) by asking me why I am here , or what I am doing here. I try to dodge the question by saying something "funny" but this particular evening i said "Dont ask because you dont like the answer" Wwithin five minutes she was shouting at me
"This is my house not yours
You have no right to be here
I want you out
Im calling the police
I want you out of my house now
So pack your bags and leave
You are not staying in this house" etc etc

Then all went quiet.
I saw her taking the dogs upstairs
and called out "have you taken the dogs outside" ( for a pee last thing at night)
She said "Ive taken them"
Shortly after she came to tell me that one of the dogs had peed on our bed but she had seen to it
I went upstairs to find she had dabbed it with  kitchen towel and the duvet cover and duvet were both wet.
When I said "We wil lhave to change the cover and duvet" she said they were fine.
I told her I wasnt sleeping in that bed
So I went to bed in another bedroom
An hour later she woke me up
"what are you doing here, ive been standing on the landing for the last hour waiting for you to come up" She was fully dressed
I said "well you can either sleep here or in your own bed"
She said "Well you can sleep here all the time then.
Fine!"

Throughout all of these exchanges Im being told what a horrible nasty individual I am.

After she hid all the house and car keys I took a set and put them on a key ring which I keep on me at all times. Maureen saw it and wanted to know why I had keys to her house and her can when they ad nothing to do with me. I shouldnt have keys to someone elses property and car

Again following the Communiy nurses visit the Psychologist recommended anti depressants for Maureen. She refused to take them The offer of a day a week at a day centre was also refused.

And so we soldier on. I wish Maureen would say "I feel there is something wrong with me" then we could talk about it ,even if she forgot.

the dogs had their hair cut on thursday in a location that takes us an hour to get to. They know maureen has Alzheimers so she sits and has coffee with the lady of the house. So the dogs are now waling aroud looking smart. But today Maureen says "We are going to get the dogs hair cut today."
She mixes the two dogs up and calls one by the others name.

So many small things ...

On and On

Ive said it before that if you post it sounds as if you are complaining when you are NOT the one with the problem

But Ive also said I post to plot the profress of the disease. And if the disease never gets better, then its hard not to be posting negative stuff. The experts will give you Brochures with heart warming tales of how carers stimulate , or keep their loved one cheerful and positive and feeling loved. And there are nice pictures of silver haired smiling ladies and their warm cuddly carer

Well my loved one has dyed hair and Im bald.

The most recent examples (again just as a way of reminding myself where we are today)

This morning I took our two miniature schnauzers for their morning walk. Ive done this every day for the last 14 years except when I was away on holiday or in hospital. We got caught in the rain without the dogs rain coats.And although we stood under trees,we still came home wet.
I was told I had taken the dogs out without permission and My wife always took the dogs out (she says) and last week I took her car to the dog walk without her permission. The dogs got lots of sympathy for being wet. I got none.

Last evening my wife sat and scoffed chocolates she had been given for her birthday ( thats fine they are her chocolates) but I said "steady on, youre fair scoffing away". I had one chocolate
This morning "some pig has eaten most of the chocolates from this box"

Last week the Community nurse came. She is supposed to come once a year to check Maureens blood pressure and weight and see how she is generally. As a result of her visit,it was suggested that Maureen might benefit from anti depressant tablets. I put them out each night for the last three nights and my wife has refused to take them on the grounds that she takes enough tablets already and a tablet that small cant possibly do any good and in any event she is not depresssed so they are a waste of time.

In the last two weeks she has gone crying to our neighbours about the horrible nasty man who is living in the house (me) and she wants him out now.

She lost all the house keys and in the course of  the general search,she retrieved them one by one.

She told me she wasnt going to take any more medication and she had thrown out all her tablets because therre was nothing wrong with her. In fact she had hidden the tablets.

She takes a shower about once a week now telling me that lots of people dont have showers and that she has a "good wash every morning"

It gets me down. After an arguement I dont want to talk to her ,but after a while she has forgotten the arguement although she knows from my silence that something is wrong.

The Community Nurse had suggested (again) that Maureen might like to go to a Day Centre ( to meet other people and socialise). Maureen again refused saying she was perfectly happy at home with me and the dogs.

Every day she asks if I know when "Steve" went out or where he has gone or what time he will be home and sometimes she sets an extra place at table for him. "Steve" is her husband . I am apparently a guest or a friend. This is one of the reasons she gets upset if I do something round the house like painting or cleaning,because you wouldnt ask someone to stay in your house and then let them paint or clean the place

When she is ironing she will separate out "Steves" shirts and socks or pantsfrom mine

She has stopped cooking.