When the Ceiling is Starting to Fall

Imagine that when you get up in the morning the ceiling to your abode looks about 1/4 inch lower. You do not notice it at first, but something is wrong and you know it, even though you cannot put your finger on it. 

You go to an Architect and he looks at the ceiling and says not to worry because it seems just fine to him. 

The next morning you get up and you are sure that the ceiling has moved, but you have a busy week ahead and you ignore that. A few months go by and you notice the ceiling is almost 1/2 inch lower. Still, it is smooth and no paint is chipped, and it seems that when people come to visit they do not notice, or the change is so small they politely ignore it. There are no cracks where it joins the wall. Odd? 

 You wait a few more months and then make an appointment with a building engineer. He comes by and shakes his head in agreement. He says he has seen this before. "Not much you can do, but keep an eye on it." He gives you a gallon of lighter-colored paint to make the ceiling look higher. It seems cosmetic, but you do it anyway. 

A year passes and the ceiling is definitely lower and looking looming! You have been working at other activities ignoring it, but did move down the drapery rods so that they no longer touch the top of the ceiling. The engineer says you are lucky that you built the house with such high ceilings because those homes with lower or regular ceilings have less flexibility in dealing with the changes. 

As the months pass you realize that just moving drapery rods is the smallest of sacrifices that are going to be made in the months and perhaps, years ahead. The windows themselves may soon get pressure and then be dangerous! Yes, you can crawl on your hands and knees for a while, but eventually, the house will collapse and you will have to move.  If you live with someone who cannot crawl, that will have to be fixed!

Well, if you have followed me this far, I appreciate your stubborn tenacity.  Above is a rather weak analogy, and yet something that came to me when I was having a man who had been laid off and needed money come to add some trim to my bookcases and paint the cracks in my house.  It took three days of living in spackle dust and chair covers and a lack of privacy.  It was surprisingly stressful.

Above is the story of how looming pressure affects those of us who live with someone who has dementia.  Days go by and you do not notice.  Then one morning he asks you the same question three times within a half hour.  At dinner, he thinks he is eating a salad of tomatoes and avocados and it is a salad of orange slices and avocados.  During a busy day, he may interrupt me 5 to ten times to help him with an email, a phone call, or to find something important.

Please do not praise me for my patience.  I have no patience.  It is tax season, and there is a big project being set up (ANOTHER LONG TEDIOUS STORY), and we have a two-week cruise in March with lots of details.  My family is going on this cruise, so we really want to join them as it may very well be the last time we are all together.

I have cajoled and argued and sighed on the worst days, and then a week of normal goes by and I forget where I am in the grand scheme of things.  Yes, there are lots of tools and helpful procedures and I have started to use a few.  I also think writing about it is helpful to me, while perhaps annoying to my readers.