What is Your Name?

Don't read this if you get easily depressed, because I know that after tonight's episode, I am depressed enough for an entire city. Maybe he is loosing more functioning because he is still ill. I do not know what to think.

He was in the bathroom on the toilet. He moved his bowels and wiped himself. I asked about the toilet paper still in his hand and he didn't know what to do with it. I had him stand up so I could see his progress. He had done some wiping after all. He sat back down.

"Throw the paper in your hand into the toilet." He did not know what to do. He looked at the garbage pail next to the toilet and pointed at that. "No," I said, "In the toilet." He continued to look confused. I asked him to stand up again and said, "You throw the shit paper in there." "Oh," he replied.

I explained the process to him again and you would have thought I was speaking in a foreign language. "So it looks like you do not know how to use the toilet anymore, I will have to help you."

He got upset with me and was able to say, "Can't ... you ... just ... tell ... me?"

"Yes," I answered, "but when I tell you you don't understand." He didn't understand. We went through the three or four times. Tell me. But you don't understand. Tell. Understand. Tell? Understand?

Previously we have attributed his problems to Alzheimer's and he is usually the first to tell you he has it. I said, "This is what Alzheimer's is all about isn't it! You know that don't you?"

"No! I have Alzheimer's?" He was incredulous as if he or I had never said or heard this before.

"Yes you do," I answered, "we have talked about this before." So I braved it and asked something I have wanted to ask for a while, "What is my name?" No reply. "Do you know my name?" He stood there silently for quite a while with a look of dread on his face.

Finally he said sadly, "No I don't."

"Michael. Do you know your name?"

He fumbled for words, thought, and finally answered, "I don't have one."

"Your name is Gregory." A light somewhere deep inside seemed to go on, or was I just imagining it.

"Why don't you get ready for bed now" and we had to work through what that meant.