I've been telling you a tad about Adventures with Alzheimer's, with a grave nod at its solemnity, and a teeny wink at the humorous side of a terrible affliction. Teeny, Really more of an eye spasm than a wink.
Today, early this morning, I was concerned about Auntie. She was pale, not completely coherent, addled. Truly addled, as in she couldn't keep a thought in her head for mere seconds. Her eyes were blank and lifeless even as she shuffled around using muscle memory to make her morning pot of coffee.
My grandfather called us, offering to take us to breakfast, and true to form, Auntie's ears perked at the sound of free food on a warm plate that she doesn't have to clean. We go to Panera bread and Grandpa and I chat while the aunt peruses the newspaper. I don't notice any abnormalities in her behavior at all. Everything is copacetic again. Yay.
Okay. Return to the casa and we're off to Sam's. We are out of Ritz crackers, the only cracker the discerning palette must have when drinking Wild Turkey 101.
Auntie goes to the blood pressure taker thingie at the back of the store, near the pharmacy. Again, this is muscle memory, as we had been taking her pressure seemingly every five minutes to see if/when medications could be balanced out to give us the quintessential octogenarian blood flow.
The test ends. 95 over 82.
I blinked. I looked in Auntie's eyes. They were glazed again. I immediately and quietly suggested we try that again. She sits ever so peacefully waiting for the new reading while I glance over to the floral department to see if the newest shipment includes calla lillies for the graveside. (I'm kidding! sheesh...I can hear your boos from here.)
97 over 84.
She must have detected a slight tremor of panic in my voice after the first test because, hey, look at that, it's risen! Darn near perfect again...if she were a hummingbird, maybe.
Yada yada yada, get her in the van without passing out, in the van, out to QDoba for the soup she loves, back to the house, break out the plastic microwave plates from the 1980's when microwaves were brand new and completely free to shed their radiation upon opening the door, and ring the doc.
He's a busy dude but the triage nurse will give him the infomration and he'll call back, "just prop her in a corner and splash her with water once in a while to insure she's conscious." (Okay, maybe I loosely paraphrased the nurse.)
Her soup is ready, and it's served up with the appropriate utensils and paper sack of tortilla chips provided by the restaurant To Go Girl. (I'm pretty sure that's an official title.)
Okay. I'm biting into my delicious Naked Burrito with Pork, every bit as delicious and dirty as it sounds, while she loads up her spoon and shovels in the first taste.
Remember that up until this moment she's been comatose, my own personal walking Stepford Aunt, doing everything I tell her without question or sideways glance. Not even a peep. Ah, golden silence.
But once she swallows her first drizzle of soup, with her neck still bent in that awkward leaning-in angle that we use when we eat soup, her eyes pop into our planet, alert and wide and shocked to be awake.
Gigantic drops of liquid immediately form on every one of the four coal black hairs over her lip, and her face instantaneously flushes a shiny cardinal red.
I find myself staring at her, waiting for her first words, as though she were an alien newborn child on the verge of earthly communication.
Her mouth ajar, steam wisps out, and sliding out on the downdraft of tomato fumes, I hear the whispered syllable, "Hot..."
"Are you okay?" I query, a bit freaked out but fascinated at the new events.
"Spicy," she mouths, as she stands. She streaks to the kitchen, an unprecedented action since, again, she's older than dirt and supposedly slightly infirm. She's coughing and sputtering and ahem-ing up a storm while she fills a highball with ice and tap water. The water is nearly gone in the three now-short steps it takes her to return to the table and sit.
She stares at the soup as if it was a volcano into which she was to be tossed.
She grabs a fistful of tortilla chips, crushing them with her spoon until they are minute and submerged. She takes a breath and goes in for the second bite. On and on like this, bite after bite, she hums and coughs and chokes down the soup! She puts an ice cube into the liquid, shoves more chips under the lava and keeps on eating, like a good scout, until she just can't take another bite.
Then comes the flatulence.
"Excuse me a minute," she says as she toots across the floor. Like an old balloon with a leaky spout she makes her way into the bathroom for minutes on end.
When she returns to the table, I have no words.
"I think I'll save the rest for later," she tells me, tucking the plastic bowl into the fridge. I'm thinking it's a terrible idea to keep eating something that does that to a person, but only moments later she is reciting verbatim things I had said to her ten hours before, she's generating new and original ideas, she's telling jokes, she's reliving anecdotes from her childhood, and she has regained the ability to play dominoes. These are all things unheard of only moments before The Soup Incident.
The cure for Alzheimer's: whatever the hell is in QDoba's spice packet. Try it. You'll see...
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