Pills, walks, naps, showers and hot chocolate

Bob Curtis takes another walk

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Bella gets five pills in the morning, two at lunch and 10 before bed. Six a day are anti-seizure pills, one is a statin to lower cholesterol, one is a thyroid medication and the rest address her restlessness and agitation and anxiety caused by Alzheimer’s.

Ringo, our dog, gets four anti-seizure pills in the morning — two are levetiracetam, the same medicine Bella takes — and four at night.

I turn on the kitchen lights at about 7 a.m.

“Have a seat, Sweetie,” I say, pulling out one of the chairs at the butcher block. “Have a seat and I’ll get you some coffee.”

“Where do I sit?” Bella says.

“Here,” I pat the seat. “Right here. I’ll get you some coffee.”

I put her pills in a spoon and feed them to her, then hand her the coffee.

“Swallow them, don’t chew them,” I say.

At night, I divide the 10 pills into three or four spoonfuls.

She prefers to have the pills in her palm and to grab them and place them in her mouth, or raise her palm and press it to her mouth. I let her do that with the two little pills at lunch.

Ringo’s four pills I bury in hunks of cheese softened in the microwave. He moves his head away, so I shove a tiny piece between his teeth so he tastes it, then feed him the chunks one at a time.

We sit in the library, and I make us toast and bring it in. I do New York Times word games on my phone, and Bella and Ringo doze. This can go on for two or three hours. If Bella is dead asleep, head tilted back, I’ll tiptoe out and do some laundry or dishes or make a phone call. Otherwise, I’ll stay next to her on the couch, challenging myself with the Times’ Spelling Bee and tormenting myself with coverage of the second Trump administration.

Often, we’ll go out in the late morning for a walk and errands — grocery and prescription pickups; greens for Beans, our bunny, at Price Chopper — and stop at Uncommon Grounds, where Bella has hot chocolate and I have cappuccino and we share a cookie or a bagel.

At home, we watch TV and eat lunch, often a turkey burger with a slice of raw onion, or one of the chicken, rice and bean burritos Tam, our daughter, made for us when she was home.

We watch TV in the afternoon or go out for a drive if Bella is restless. Sometimes, she takes a short walk down the street by herself, although the cold has been preventing that. I follow in the car, waiting until she stops and looks around and seems ready to get picked up.

She has been walking down people’s driveways, which worries me, although local people tend to be kind. Last summer, when she was wandering a lot, she went down a driveway off one of the streets near Murray Street Park, and one of two young men who appeared to be getting high on the porch said to me, “She has to get off my property.”

It made me angry, but he had a point.

Zo, our son, comes over sometimes after work in the late afternoon to check on us and pet Ringo and give Bella and me a hug, which feels good.

We eat dinner, and I give Bella her pills and put her to bed. I do a few things around the house and give Ringo his pills.

I’ve forgotten a few of the daily events, like feeding Beans and cleaning his litter box, and showering with Bella. I wash her first, then turn the water off and dry her with a towel and help her get her clothes on. Then I get back in the shower and wash myself and shave.

Often, I’ll do a few calisthenics while we’re watching TV to keep up a minimum of physical condition.

I get up a few hours before Bella, so I can write, although, sometimes, she can’t sleep after I get up and wanders around the house. At first, I’ll give her a hug and put her back to bed, but if she persists more than a few times, I ignore it, or try to, unless she goes outside.

She walks slowly through the dark rooms, holding her hands up so she doesn’t run into anything. She clutches my arms when I come to her and puts her head against my chest.

“It’s early. Do you want to get back in bed?” I say.

“Yes,” she says, and I lead her back and cover her up. Within minutes, usually, I hear her moving around again.

I’ve been rehanging all the family photos I took down from our staircase, because we were having work done on our bathroom upstairs. I see me and the kids, smiling and standing around Bella, who is our sun and our fire. It makes me sad.

Walking for office

Bob Curtis already walks a lot around the Fifth Ward, where I live, so door-to-door campaigning for a seat on the Glens Falls Common Council will fit right in to his daily schedule.

When he saw that the current holder of the seat, Mary Gooden, had decided to run for councilman at large, he thought, “What the heck?”

He worked about 37 years for the city, 10 as the mayor’s assistant and 27 as the city clerk.

“I know how local government works,” he said.

A registered Republican, he described himself as “not a political person.”

Thankfully, the day to day administration of the city’s business has not been sucked into the vortex of partisanship made so much more violent by Donald Trump. None of us can ignore what is happening in the country at large, but it’s a relief that, when it comes to running the city, it’s still the concrete local issues — the state of the sidewalks and the direction of downtown development — that matter.

Curtis had a heart attack last June, so when he walks he stays on neighborhood streets, and off the trails, and carries a little nitroglycerin in his pocket.

He’s a member of the comprehensive plan committee and wants the benefits of new construction tempered by a respect for the city’s architectural legacy.

“I want to listen to the constituents. I want to help out and try to make things better,” he said.

“As long as I feel good, and I think I can make a contribution, I’ll go for it,” he said.

He didn’t mind hearing complaints when he was city clerk, he said.

“If somebody came in with a problem, I’d figure out a solution and try to send them away with a smile,” he said.

Help is too hard to find

Glens Falls city officials came to an agreement recently with Doug Holl, a firefighter with early onset Alzheimer’s disease who can no longer respond to fire calls.

Holl is two years short of the 20 years of service that would qualify him for full retirement benefits, and despite the willingness of other firefighters to donate to him paid time off they had earned, city officials had earlier said they could not legally grant Holl the benefits.

After lots of public pressure and some negotiations, however, officials came up with a strategy that will allow Holl to get his benefits. I’m glad for him.

But we should not have to rely on rallies and fundraisers and Facebook comments to take care of people. As rich as this country is, we could come up with the money to care for our elderly and our sick, whether they worked as firefighters or accountants or stayed home with the kids.

We need a government solution, not a reliance on neighborly good will, which can never cover the need. For every Doug Holl who gets help, there are hundreds whose care falls short.

Poem

Here is a poem by Richard Carella of Hudson Falls:

Web Sight

Clinging to web threads...                                                                                                          a few beads of

moisture–

drawn, briefly, into;                                                                                                           (precarious) existence.

Richard’s poem made me think of a photo I took last summer of evanescent webs in the morning on the evergreen bush next to our front fence.

Not so Wildlife

We can’t get out in the woods for walks with the cold and the ice, so I have to content myself with filming the wildlife at home. Ringo has been wanting to make friends with Beans for years, while Beans has been hesitant. We kept a gate up between Beans’ room and the rest of the house. But the gate is down now, and the friendship has blossomed: