Rain, Rain, Go Away

Rain, rain, and more rain is the weather report from Florida. Tropical storm Fay moved herself in and decided that she liked Florida so much she extended her trip. Well, we are tired of Fay and will be glad when she moves on.

Bob had a quiet week for the most part due to the rain. Thursday he went to see his primary care doctor and had a good report. He has been released for eye surgery which will be in September. He also is now on a one month visit instead of every two weeks.
His Alzheimer’s medication has been increased and we are hoping that will help with sleep and some other issues.

The storm had him upset some about his daughter Robin that lives in Cocoa. He was worried that she would have flooding or need help. He finally reached her Thursday evening and felt better after he spoke to her.

He went to bed Thursday watching the “football Olympics” game. He told us that the preseason football game was part of the Olympics. They had started with six teams and now this was the final game. He was glad we had turned it on for him, because he had forgotten all about it. What ever works!

Friday he went to the VA and while he was there, he needed to use the restroom. Well, at first he told me no, but I told him he better try before we started the trip home. Well, he went into the restroom fine and Sarah and I waited outside. He was taking a very long time, so I cracked the door and called for him, asking if he was alright. He told me yes. We waited longer and in that time two other men went in and used the restroom. We waited and waited. I twice more cracked the door and asked if he was alright and he again said yes. All of a sudden the red alarm that is outside the bathroom door started blinking red and sounding an alarm. Sarah and I looked at each other and I opened the door and called for Pop. A worker was in the bathroom and told me that he was fine and he had the situation. I closed the door and told Sarah he had a worker helping him.

Well the alarm never went off and finally the worker came out and told me that Bob had set the alarm off and didn’t know how to turn it off and he didn’t know how to unlock the stall door. Before you knew it there were six people all running in the bathroom, one was a doctor and one was a guy with a lot of brass. Sarah crawled off to a corner in the waiting room and hid her head and I just apologized and explained he was an Alzheimer’s patient.

Well, we finally got him out of the stall, turned the alarm off, flushed the toilet, washed our hands and he wanted to know what all the fuss was about. Everyone had a really good laugh. Bob told one of the guys that it was tough getting old, and I replied, yeah on the young and old. Sarah had a good time teasing him about going to the bathroom and letting the whole VA know that he had to go.

After the bathroom break we went and delivered the crafts he and Sarah’s home school group have worked on. Bob works on these crafts for therapy and the children work on them as a community service. The VA uses the crafts for decorating the nursing home. It is nice that we can provide a great service for them.

Bob likes to paint and work on the crafts most of the time. He used to be quite the painter. He told me that when he was in high school he used to paint horses on ties for people. He would paint the head of a horse on a silk tie for a small fee. I would have like to have seen one of those ties. I bet they were really something. He has a hard time painting now. Picasso would be more his style I would say. Abstract art is what he has progressed to.

Hummmmm, now there’s a thought for you all….Did Van Gogh, Picasso, and all the rest of those great artists really develop into their style of painting or would they all be classified as having Alzheimer’s disease if they were still around today?