Life. No Insight

So, here's what I hear almost every day. "Living with you is misery. Being in this house is misery. You make me feel like a piece of shit, like crap, and it has been that way for years. You constantly berate me, and won't let me do what I want. it is just miserable being with you. I don't know why you are doing this to me."
This can come out of the blue, because I am on the computer doing some work or reading emails, because I had a "game face" not sure what that means, because I disagreed with an opinion he expressed about something on CNN (disagreement is also met with, "I do know things. I really do know what I am talking about, you always tell me I don't know what I am talking about and this is why there is no conversation."), the perception that I am upset or angry. I have tried different approaches: calm tone, no tone noncommittal responses, offering my opinion, angry tone, rebuttal...all come to the same thing. "The misery factor with you is unbelievable."
He insists I turned the children against him so that he would have to go to the Dr. There was nothing wrong, but I convinced the children there was and so he went to the Dr. and now he is diagnosed (more diagnostic stuff to come in Nov.) with frontotemporal dementia  FTD
There was something very wrong before he got a medical opinion, we just did not know what it was. The issues were clear to the whole family--everyone but him. 

House of Mirrors I

I am posting this as I write it, because there are a few posts, maybe all in this one post, maybe in different ones. But consider it a draft and a work in progres.

 How to describe the indescribable? The totally unimaginable, unfathomable world of living with an insane person? I can't fathom it and yet I am living it. I walk into a house every day and don't know what it will look like when I walk in, what it will look like from minute to minute, and what part of anything is real. It is so disorienting that I feel completely off kilter; as if the floors are slanted, or not, as if the wall ahead may not really be a wall, but instead, a mirror, a fun house mirror in which I stare at my hand, longish fingers, slender, but reach that hand out yo meet the reflection. Hand reaching out to hand, but when the fingers meet the hand I see is short and square, wavey as if under water, or a different colour, or maybe not even a hand at all, but some sort of distorted claw, the foot of a raven, perhaps, or a three toed sloth, or maybe even something that is not appendage, such as a dandelion gone to seed. And then the mind does that torque thing, the thing that feels like a rope being twisted back and forth and turned inside out, making a two dimensional object into  three dimensions, three into four. These are the mental mechanics that occur when driving up a road and a car is coming straight on, and the mind flashes through all reasonable possibilities--I am on the wrong side of the road, the road is really narrow here, making sense in the reasonable world of what is not reasonable. And so it is, reach out, look in the mirror, look in the reflection of the reflection of the mirror, get lost in the reflections, but each reflection is different, so are they reflections at all? And which one is the real one, and the mind screams to hold on to what it knows is real, to what it knows is true, screams like an animal dying in the woods at night, grasping at anything, grabbing for substance, for affirmation, but where is affirmation to come from in a house of mirrors, and what is to be believed? Each image beckons, each is seductive, enticing one to grasp onto it, to trust, but then something happens, a flash of light, an almost undetected movement and uncertainty takes hold, thankfully, because to fall into those traps is perhaps to never get out. And that is annihilation.

Strange Days

Too tired to post, too wrung out, too discombobulated. Will do so later in the week, post on living in a house of mirrors.

Strange, so strange.

Uncertainty

PET Scan Friday, Sept. 24th, follow up appointment November 16th--6 weeks. RU Kidding??? 6 weeks???

Note: I do not do well with uncertainty. Whatever there is, I like to know; I like to at least think ahead, even if things change. Thinking is doing. I don't like having what feels like a void surround me--if one can even be surrounded by a void--so the fact that the next appointment--the appointment at which information about some sort of something will be imparted--is 6 weeks away is excruciating....it is like this...
Life without boundaries is not a comfortable state.
droves of  leaves fall from trees
swirling in updrafts before giving over to the inevitability of gravity
dancers felled mid pirouette
they scatter on late year grass and gravel roads,
tribute spread before emperors.

Yet, I am completely unable to picture next fall.
(a year from now, so much can happen in a year)

the first snow, first hard frost, first tentative ice in the stock tank,
even the end of the day tomorrow are unimaginable.
no, not quite. they were once certain but are now obscured, and even assurance of the inevitable is unconjurable,
as if I lost the ability to see ahead or to even know that there is something ahead.It is like reaching out to feel a muslin curtain only to have it dissolve between finger tips and blow away. dust. dust so fine it can't even be felt.
looking out through water on a windshield in a heavy rainstorm
waves and tones of grey shot through with occasional flashes of red and yellow

fall was crisp last year,
the winter all blue and white and not too cold
good snow
full of laughter that continued into spring
a reality based in thinking that things seen were things known
(a year ago, so much can happen in a year)

And so, here I am now, waiting and waiting and waiting for what? For answers, for something that will tell me or at least hint at the length of this road. I want to know how long it will take for him to dissolve entirely, and how much of him is gone. I realize that will not be given as an absolute, but something is better than this absolutely nothing.
There are plans that must be made, things put in place. That can't happen without some sort of guide as to what lies ahead. At some point he is beside the point. Where there is little to nothing that can be done, and things will progress as they will, it is more about the rest of us than about him; we can change us, we cannot change him, or affect or alter his situation. That is why I need to know something.....so, Wednesday I called the neurologist's office and asked them if they could please give some information about the scan before the visit even if just an outline. The nurse called back quickly, and the doctor the next day. I was not here for the call, but at least there is something that will come rather soon. A much better feeling than seemingly relentless unknowing.