At the breakfast table he said, “I just can’t wait until I can go out and mow the lawn, get my driver’s license back, go shopping and use my credit card…” I did not say anything until later when I reminded him that he could use his credit card any time we were in the store. “I know” he said.

7-31-2019

Today, Dennis insisted on going with me to attend the day’s work. Yesterday our 16 foot container from PackRat came early in the morning. I worked unloading it into Kevin’s basement from 10 am until 7 pm. Julie came to help around 3 pm and Kevin came to help with the last heavier pieces of furniture. We were satisfied just to get it all into the basement. No organization whatsoever.

So, today the work was to look over everything, organize into as small a space as possible, and identify anything we had been wanting with us in Wisconsin – all things I thought would be easier if I were doing them myself. But it was okay. He got ready to go quickly and was prepared to tough it out.

One of our furniture items was his mother’s Lazy Boy recliner. I cleared everything off it and made it available to him. For a while he poked around looking at and asking questions about furniture he didn’t remember. I admit, for a man it could be hard to recognize something that’s not in its usual place in your house. When he finally sat in the recliner he remembered how much he liked it – how it didn’t make his head bend too far forward, hard arms at just the right height, went back easily when he wanted to recline. I decided we would take it back to Wisconsin. (You can’t believe all the different things that can be wrong about a chair until you’ve been around Dennis.)

I suggested he look through a trunk labeled “Dennis, memorabilia”. He began to read the top layers of papers and found some interesting documents he thought he had never seen – perhaps given to him after his mother’s funeral when he didn’t have time to go through them. There were things his mother had written and copies of her will. There was the agreement signing the family farm over to his nephew. Of course, all these brought tears and choked him up so he could hardly speak.

But the worst/best, depending on how you looked at it, was a typed out sermon that he may or may not have actually given. He didn’t remember giving it and it was so long that he couldn’t imagine having been given time to deliver it either. It was basically the story of his life, particularly his spiritual development and his time in the Worldwide Church of God. Reading his decisions made years ago, I heard him say things like “I was so wrong back then.” And “I still have questions about that.” He wrote about his relationships with significant people in his life. He cried as he read it out loud to me as I worked. He was such an emotional mess I had to go hunting for some tissue for his eyes and nose. He was pretty exhausted when he finished.

The funny thing is that he didn’t mention wanting the chest to go back to Wisconsin with us. He read only a few things in the top layer. When it was time to leave, I closed it up and stacked it with our other things in storage. It stays there in Kevin’s basement. He’s had a persistent train of thought that significant family items should be given to his brother or to his nephews, almost like he’s forgotten that he has daughters who are going to want to know about his side of the family. He talked with his brother about some coins he wanted to give him, but his brother didn’t want them. That’s why they had ended up with Dennis in the first place. I’m pretty sure he wants his girls to make decisions about those things and I’m going to make sure that is what happens.

Loading the truck with the chair and a few other precious things was challenging, especially trying to get my new keyboard in the cab with us where it would be cooler. Dennis had all kinds of suggestions and he did try to help. We struggled, loaded and reloaded a couple of times and I finally called it quits, with the keyboard sticking out the open window of the back seat. We strapped ourselves in, only to discover that the keys were nowhere to be found. Mind you, it’s about 90 degrees in the shade and we are very tired.

I unloaded everything in the back seat one more time, asking God for help, as I almost always do for everything I lose. I was not seeing them and about to check myself into a mental facility when Dennis, the person who never finds anything, found the keys. He happened to see my purse on the floor on his side of the cab and looked in a pocket that I had not searched, and seldom used. They were there.

How wonderful to be used by God in a very unaccustomed role. We do what we can, but it is God who chooses us and equips us for what is needed. It made a nice resolution to a very frustrating time.

Uncomfortable, but not uncommon. I think I did a fair job of not taking things too personally.

This is the fourth day of our visit to Dennis’s family in Pennsylvania. It has been a good time for us, overall. Today I am staying back at the house while Ron and Deanna take Dennis over to see his cousin Jim.  I have one of my 3 day headaches and this is the third day so I should be good by tomorrow.  I think it might have started because they only have decaf coffee here, but I’m not sure.

We spent two weeks living in the travel trailer, in the Smith Meadow. On the Sunday we left, we made it to church and heard a sermon about Elijah. In the cave where he was resting/hiding, he heard God’s still, small voice telling him to go back to a dangerous place and trust God for protection. Dennis took that to heart and said “Let’s go back to the condo.”

There were other motivators, of course. He had started having difficulty keeping warm at night, to the point of becoming near panicked. He also felt isolated and a bit afraid when he was there alone. He had started worrying about bears, although none have been reported there for quite some time.  He had started thinking that there was an electric fence somewhere close that was wreaking havoc with his eyesight and his hearing.  Being there was getting old and of questionable value.

I called him a few hours after dropping him off at the trailer and asked how he was feeling. “Afraid,” he said. But he was feeling God wanted him to face his fears.  I went out immediately and picked him up, along with a load of our most necessary stuff. We have been back in the condo now for three full days. Symptoms have come and gone and although he has tried to link them to high water tables, electric fields and beaver dams being rebuilt, he is beginning to be confused as to the actual cause.  Each time he starts to educate me on what he thinks is happening, and runs into a wall because I cannot be convinced, he sits and prays. He renews his resolve to trust God and comes to tell me that he will try not to be afraid. He always acknowledges that being back in the modern, more convenient world is better than being in the meadow.

Yesterday we went back, briefly, to retrieve the last things from the trailer.  He didn’t want to go, but made himself face his fears. He was amazed when I told  him there was no electric fence.  He was amazed when he was able to step up on the deck with good balance.  He was amazed when he was able to help put a few things in the truck.  He was amazed when he was able to walk out of the meadow on uneven ground, all the way to the main road. “This isn’t really such a bad place, is it?” He said that with conviction.

“No, it was nice in many ways, and I wouldn’t mind coming back for a night or two, now and then…”  which is really how I feel.  In many ways, I love the meadow. It is a beautiful place to watch God’s creation.  But, for now, I am glad to be back to one life, in one place, one day at a time.

Well, it all bothers me because it is so sad and not what either of us wanted for our “golden years”. But what bothers me to point that I feel it in my gut, and play it over and over in my mind, is when he starts diagnosing me and wanting me to follow his advice.

Early on, in the magnesium stage, he would tell me that I was flapping my arms in my sleep and breathing funny. I needed to be on magnesium right away.

If I forget anything, even for a moment, dementia is setting in and I get a knowing look.

In the middle of the night I have found him standing by my side of the bed, insisting that I drink some water because he had a hard time waking me. I was dehydrating to death, I guess.

If I get sleepy during the day, it’s the electric field dulling my mind, pushing me into unconsciousness.

Last night he was frightened by how long I supposedly went without breathing and insisted that I get a cap to cover my head from the cold – the obvious solution. Nights are the craziest.

I tried to reason with him this morning and in the process he pointed out that, intellectually, I had to admit that when sleeping, how could I possibly be aware of what I was doing? I pointed out to him that someone who had bad hearing, limited eyesight, and tended to be fearful was probably not capable of making assessments in the middle of the night either, intellectually. It made no difference. I have to learn to listen and reassure, then dismiss so it doesn’t vex me for hours after. VEX, a word that even looks like it feels.

6-25-2019

He woke two times during the night and the chief complaint was that he was cold. In spite of sleeping in his stocking hat, down shirt, hoodie, socks and pajama pants he was not getting warm under the comforter. It was a queen size and he had it all. I was in a sleeping bag with an annoying zipper that got stuck every time I had to get out to help him.

I don’t know what the temp was inside our trailer but the weather app said it was 59 degrees outside. His first remark, beside how cold he was, was about the sky temperature and one of his friends being right about radiant heat, blah, blah, blah… I had to laugh (inwardly) at his observation during the night when I was up helping him, standing around waiting in T-shirt and underwear. “I’m glad you have more fat than I do, to keep you warm,” he said. He followed up with a disclaimer that he didn’t mean I was fat, just that I had more fat than he did. I know he feels he has lost weight (can’t keep his pants up) but even with that the remark was funny.

My plan to warm him up was to get the truck going, stick him in it and go to breakfast in some nice warm place, with coffee. We were at the Robin’s Nest at 7 when it opened.

Sometime in the last few weeks he has lost sight of the reasons for eating Keto. Protein has become a naughty word because the Lewy bodies are misfolded proteins. It’s now complex carbohydrate all the way. He had a big breakfast of oatmeal and raisin toast and one egg. That’s why I was surprised, after a couple hours hanging out at the church, that he wanted to ask Mom to go to lunch with us. We picked her up at 1 pm and went to Norski Nook and again were stuffed.

In discussing the rest of the day, and picking Mom up, I discovered that he now doesn’t even want to be in the driveways of either of our condos. Five minutes, in the car, in the driveway sets his progress back. He can feel the electricity. I parked a distance away near the garden where he thought it would be okay but he told me when I came back that it wasn’t a good spot either.

Is this really our life for the future? In order to have any time in my own home I have to take him back to the meadow and leave him there. That’s what I did. He insisted that I bring my brother’s propane heater out, in case it’s cold again tonight. And tied up in all this, is the sky temperature which is evidently much colder than it should be because “they” are seeding it. Climate manipulation.

His most prevalent problem is with delusion and the “foggy” forgetful times. The delusion is persistent. The forgetfulness comes and goes minute by minute and always surprises me. Today he forgot how to get to the bathroom in the church, a place he has been dozens of times. He doesn’t hear because he won’t wear the hearing aides, and he sees more poorly all the time and comments about it. He is disabled to the point that he crows over things like being able to put on his shirt, or pick something up from the floor, or get out of bed by himself.

I don’t recognize our life anymore.

Meadow

6-23-2019

Last night I thought we did rather well. Dennis slept in one bed all night. He got up to the bathroom several times but seemed to be sleeping quietly the rest of the time. I hadn’t flipped the main breaker like I had the night before, so the electricity was on too and he didn’t talk much about feeling symptoms.

Nevertheless, this morning he asked how soon we could leave the house. I had agreed that we would ask a friend in Duluth if we could stay with them for a couple nights – just to see if being in their house, high on a hill, would satisfy the electrical sensitivity problem “we’re” having. They had extended the invitation, but I was considering the difficulty of getting Dennis up their long staircase to the one and only bathroom on the second floor.

Talking this over with Mom, after church, she suddenly came up with an idea. “Why don’t you try going out to the meadow first? It’s close, it’s high ground, and there’s no electricity at all.”

There is a property about six miles from town, owned by Mom as part of the family estate. It was part of the farm that I grew up on. It was always a favorite place for my brothers, especially the eldest of them, to hunt and just be out in nature. It’s actually 80 acres that’s about half field and half forest. Just inside the forested part is a large clearing that brother Ron has been tending. He has planted it with good grass, cleared trails in the surrounding woods and spends time improving it when he’s up on vacation. Along one border, tucked in close to the trees is an old house trailer, put there by my Dad, that the family uses on the rare occasions when staying out there overnight. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before when searching for an unelectrified place. Probably because I didn’t really want to leave home at all.

So, I packed up some things and we came to check it out. Other than getting there and finding it was locked, we’ve had no real problems. We had to go back for the key, and I went back again for a few things that I forgot, but all told, the husband has been here for five hours now and is happy. He’s either been sleeping or eating, both of which have been hard for him when affected by the electric field at home. He claims to feel wonderful, although he still has symptoms which he attributes to all the damage that has been happening for the last two weeks since we moved into the condo.

I am very interested in seeing how this first night out here goes for him. No electricity, no water except what we bring in jugs, no working bathroom, and smelling like mice – but way better than any tent, for sure. It’s easy for him to get into, has a bed he likes, chairs, table and a couch. What more could a man want? Will this give him the opportunity to recover from LBD, like he thinks it will? Will this give him time to write his book? He thinks so and this is why he’s so happy.

The meadow is beautiful with waist high grasses. A moment ago I saw a deer strolling through, grazing as it went. It’s peaceful here. I just have to figure out how to fit this into the rest of life, if it’s the only way Dennis can feel good. Unlike him, I have other responsibilities, but at least I’ve been able to honor his request to “get me out of here!” I have to do this just in case there’s a chance that it truly is an electrical field that has caused him to deteriorate so rapidly.

This is so frightening.

Dennis came out of the bedroom this morning and every sentence out of his mouth was anxiety ridden and on the edge of panic.
“You need to be taking this too (magnesium) and the proteolytic enzymes as well. You need to be watching your protein intake and getting enough.”
“You need to take your tea and go sit by the grounding mat. You need to get grounded right away.”
“You need to spend as much time as possible away from the house, outside.”
“If you want to talk with me, come in the bedroom and sit on the bed (with its grounding mat).”
“We are one. You have the same thing I do. I saw you getting sleepy last night. You could hardly keep your eyes open.”

He goes in the bedroom like he says he will, but reappears every minute or so with another directive. Even though he says he has figured out that his distress last night was from the Cajun spices (in his Greek chicken wrap…) he says the electrical issue is not solved. We must resolve it. I will probably be hearing how that is to be done all day.

Is there hope of this changing?