Chapter 622 - Illusions, Delusions and Hallucinations

 As I went to tell her I was about to walk up to the hall to check for mail I noticed she was fiddling with a notice from the village management. It was printed on pink A4 paper and because it had been left on her adjustable table, there were some food stains on it. "I'll put that in the rubbish" I said as I reached for it. "No" she said. "Why not?" "It's the pattern for what I'm knitting" she replied. I left the paper with her, and asked whether she wanted to fold some of the Coles delivery bags. "Yes I will." The folding task may take her up to an hour to fold one of those plastic carry bags into a square perhaps 10cm square around which a rubber band will be placed to hold the shape. These used to be given to a Wild Dog carer to pass onto another care client who used the bags to hold used incontinence pads and pants for disposal. I suppose we could do the same rather than hand them back to Coles at the next delivery. I buy light weight kitchen bags from Coles for the same purpose. What's a few dollars here or there?

In the recent past I bought a bundle of cheap towelling hand washers. She found that if she picked at them long enough she was able to pull out individual threads. A similar pastime to what she once did with short lengths of ribbon. She spent several days demolishing one of the hand washers before deciding to bin it. In similar manner she will find loose threads in hems on clothing and that I must discourage. 

She has not entered her sewing room in ages. Perhaps because she tended to get her wheel chair into tight positions and that stressed her, initiating dyskinesia. Anyway, her not going in there looking through boxes and drawers to "find out what was in there" saves me the chore of stuffing everything away out of sight.

I am frequently asked whether "F" and "N" (her sisters) are still here or yet to arrive. Only those two. There are often nameless adults and children outside. She sometimes asks me what an object of a certain colour may be to which I may answer that I don't know or can't see it; neither answer bothers her.

She seems disinterested in TV programmes although I frequently find something light and entertaining for her to watch although she is never bothered if the streaming service times out or I ask to watch news instead, although I tend to wait for the end of an episode. Most often I select items from BritBox. She prefers to have an audio book playing once she is in bed but I sense she doesn't follow the plot closely because she seems unable to recognise how far the book reading has progressed when I restart the play back on the following evening and she is not bothered should I muddle the playback and start another different book. The books she prefers to listen to are by Betty Neales and the characters are virtually identical in every novel, English nurses and Dutch doctors. I was buying another book as she finished listening to each one but after she had a collection of 15 or more I discovered that she did not mind hearing a book over again. She is not bothered where I stop a book reading each night; I would ask to stop a reading at the end of a chapter and nowhere else! Music with a strong beat bothers her (possibly because of dyskinesia synchronising with it) but she seems disinterested in having any other type of music playing in the background. On good days she may hum to herself, although my tuneless ear fails to recognise what she may be rendering and at times I have asked what it is she hums without a meaningful response.

Crosswords and like puzzles no longer interest her. Several years ago we used to buy puzzle magazines as well as embroidery and quilting magazines on our regular Sunday shopping trips until she lost interest in them. Then one or two years ago I subscribed to the two puzzle magazines she once compared results with her mother by telephone and for awhile she seemed interested but some six months ago she asked me not to get them any more. Last year I bought some scrabble sets for her but she no longer understood the strategies of positioning words and making words longer that three letters seemed beyond her. I failed to persevere to encourage  her to play and as with other games, she gets more pleasure from packing away the pieces into their boxes.