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[TIMELINE: June 2022] At the beginning of June, Covid finally reared its ugly head: Peggy tested positive. Ugh. The day after the facility staff told me this, they also admitted that 11 out of the 19 residents in memory care had also tested positive. Yikes! I wasn’t happy to hear it, but not all that … Read more

[TIMELINE: May 2022] In May, our quiet reprieve came to an end as Peggy’s condition progressed—although, as with all of her previous Alzheimer’s symptoms, her new issues first appeared gradually. By the middle of the month, my sister’s spatial relationship to objects (and to herself) had really changed. One afternoon during a visit, I took … Read more

[TIMELINE: February–April 2022] During the next six weeks, we finally enjoyed a bit of a lull in the chaos of Dementia World. A big reason for this was that the sertraline seemed to be helping Peggy a lot. Previously, she had said she was so afraid that she “couldn’t do anything in her room.” For … Read more

[TIMELINE: January–February 2022] Despite January’s downward spiral into some weirdness and drama, I thought we were holding things together pretty well. By February, however, the tables had turned—and in a very bad way. Just like during the “walker incident” a few weeks earlier, we needed multiple members of Team Peggy to figure out what was going … Read more

[TIMELINE: January 2022] The first week of January started out fairly quiet and calm—but then “Team Peggy” faced a few troubling events in quick succession. The first of these was that my sister forgot what had happened to her beloved cat, Jezebel, who had died more than six months previously. Peggy asked one of her … Read more

[TIMELINE: November 2021–January 2022] After being in San Jose for a few days to help move Peggy into memory care—and then our trip back there a few weeks later to help her adjust a bit better—it felt good to return home again and finally de-stress for a minute. But my respite was limited, because talking … Read more

[TIMELINE: OCTOBER 2021] Once we got home to Washington, I tried to call Peggy again to see how she was doing but couldn’t get through to the memory care’s land line at an appropriate time. (She had lost her cell phone just before our last visit, and it was still missing.) Nevertheless, I persisted, and finally … Read more

[TIMELINE: OCTOBER 2021] By October, my sister was having a difficult time navigating pretty much everything in the assisted living side of her facility, according to the director of Resident Services. Peggy was not good in public spaces either, Maria had told me, noting that Peggy often appeared to be looking for something—or trying to … Read more

[TIMELINE: SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2021] About a week after Peggy couldn’t find her way to the bathroom in her small, assisted-living apartment, it happened again. I got yet another frantic phone call from her and, again, I had to give her step-by-step directions. Thankfully, she was able to find her way to it—but then she described her … Read more

[TIMELINE: SEPTEMBER 2021] As September got underway, I still didn’t have a time frame for when Peggy’s permanent move to memory care would happen, but I was sure it wasn’t far off—she was attending activities in that unit most days. Peggy actually had called to tell me all about it, and how she had been … Read more