LEWY BODY DAILY JOURNAL

This is the story of Pam and John; she in her early 50’s and John is 62. Pam is a college professor. John taught at a local community college until diagnosed with Parkinson’s in March 2008, then Lewy Body Dementia in April.

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Thursday, June 19, 2008

end of the trip

Our travel went smoothly, except that as we were waiting in line for passport control our son said he felt queasy. It was about 8:30 pm when we got our rental car. Luckily we had planned to spend the night at my mother's house half an hour away instead of driving the two hours back to Cape Cod. As I stopped the car at my mother's house, our son threw up, a lot. I had given him a plastic bag, which turned out not to have any holes in it, so it wasn't a huge mess. I got him to bed with a bucket. Apparently he threw up several times during the night but I was so soundly asleep in the room next door that I didn't hear him call out loudly "help" until about 3:30 am. After I had helped him I had some trouble getting back to sleep, but I eventually did.

John woke up early for him, around 7, and very groggy, but he wanted to go with me to do some shopping. I thought that one main point of the shopping was that he had lost his pyjamas, but when we were part way there he said he had found them in a different part of his bag than where he usually put them. We weren't going to head to Cape Cod until mid afternoon so our daughter could get together with a friend first, so it didn't matter much what we did. I have a very sore (though not red or runny) eye and my doctor kindly called in a prescription for me for some antibiotic ointment--I'm hoping it will be better in the morning.

What we didn't fully realize is how much extra traffic there would be around Boston because of a parade for the Celtics. We got on the road for Cape Cod about 3:30 hoping to be early enough not to hit too much traffic, but it was bad. John said he was feeling less and less groggy but by the last hour of the drive I was running out of cope and hungry.

I said I was exhausted and once we got to the house someone else would have to take over. John said we didn't need to stop on the way, he would go out quickly and get some things for dinner. I further said I couldn't handle eating later than 7 pm. He said he thought that wouldn't be a problem. I ate some bread and cheese, but I still feel just desperate to go to bed. I'm going to try to stay up at least until 8.

It is now 6:45 and he sent our daughter up to ask me how to cook the fish. John for several years did almost all the cooking, but I did specialize more in fish. I'm actually feeling a little better, so the prospect of dinner at 7:30 doesn't feel as impossible as it did. I asked our daughter to focus on helping him (she's distracted by trying to set up Skype so she can talk to her boyfriend with a webcam I just got her). Whatever happens we will learn from it.

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