A New Year

(Susan snuck out onto the ice covered porch)

We are in the first week of the New Year now and I am already realizing that it will be a year of changes. They are inevitable. Inside, I long for certain changes and hope that this family has the joy of seeing them come to fruition this year. Then there are those changes we aren’t particularly yearning for with hints of them already welcoming us into the New Year. Without meaning to, Susan keeps dropping big clues as to what is around this new year’s corner. I have to believe that God will give us the grace when we need it; otherwise I would head into this year of change with fear and dread.

As Susan’s disease runs havoc on her brain, her condition worsens before our eyes. It does not get easier. She requires more and more safeguarding and care giving these days. She no longer wears underwear since she has become more incontinent. That is not so bad, but she cannot generally understand that her pull-up needs to be removed when it is soiled. She cannot find simple things in front of her anymore and she does not seem to be able to perform a simple search for her lost object. Generally the item is in plain view to the rest of us. So she is always on the search for one object or another. Yesterday it was her keys and house slippers. My heart melts when she comes out of her room so childlike to announce that something is missing and (at my urging) returns repeatedly there to find an object. Eventually I inevitably accompany her on the ‘big search’ and simply point to the object in plain view and say, “right there, Susan.”

She is more hunched over, shuffles her feet again, thinks days are nights
and nights are days. The scariest change is that her confusion has become a danger to herself. Recently she came to the breakfast table with swollen eyes and red sore cheeks. She said she had been bitten by something in her bed. Finally I put two and two together and remembered the small zip-loc bag that contained those squares of automatic dishwashing soap that had been found beside the bathroom sink earlier. Somehow she had gotten under my kitchen sink, found the soaplets, and placed them in a zip-loc bag before taking them to her sink where she obviously used them as some sort of face scrub. Ouch! Her swollen face and cheeks served as warning signals to the rest of us: Don’t let her out of your sight! Not in the kitchen, for even a bite!

She has to be watched like a young child or she will: go outside in the freezing weather, slip on the ice, eat dog food, snack on rocks, wander off thinking she is headed someplace important, confront strangers, urinate in cosmetic bags, steal things that don’t belong to her, set the kitchen on fire, cram canned food from the pantry under her mattress, throw away important belongings, loose things, find things, and all sorts of other mischief! Just last night Jeff caught her in the bathroom contemplating drinking from a bottle of face scrub. We are on guard on her behalf more then ever. I wonder what changes tomorrow might bring. I hope and pray that I will be gracious and that Susan will be happy. Right now, she is.