Before I do anything, I have a huge suggestion to make. If you have not yet visited the beautifully redone website for the AFTD, please take the time to do so. It is very easy to navigate and to find a lot of great information. I congratulate them on the beautiful new design. www.theaftd.org
Speaking of the AFTD, their 2018 Educational Conference is coming up this week. The other day, a friend who also has FTD was amazed that I had made my travel plans by myself. I would never agree that it was amazing. I did manage to coordinate my flights with my daughter's though. We will meet up at the Pittsburgh airport and fly together to Chicago, so it did take some research and planning. What my friend did not realize was that I had spent three days working on the task. Then, I spent three days with a horrid FTD headache. I call it "brain sprain from my brain drain." Not funny, I know, but it amuses me.
That is how it is with everything. Any task takes much more time than it ever did pre-FTD and it takes longer and longer as the disease takes over. Yesterday is a perfect example. My day went like this: woke up, drank coffee, read paper and opened mail until it was around noon; then I spent about 30 minutes searching the laundry room for something I could not find (still didn't); stripped the sheets from my bed and, after my husband laundered them for me, I remade the bed; I then spent over 2 hours assembling a gift basket for a raffle for a charity I support.
That is a long sentence to describe all that I did, but let's face it, pre-FTD, after the relaxing part with the coffee, we are talking about about, at the most, an hour of activity. Truly, the 2 hours putting together the gift basket was ridiculous. I already had everything I needed in one place. It was just a matter of putting all the items into a large basket (actually was a tote bag this time) and putting it into a cellophane bag and sticking a bow on it. Except... the loaded tote bag would not fit into the bag the way it usually does, so I had to do it sideways. Every time I tried, all the items would fall over and look a mess. Finally, after multiple attempts, it dawned on me to tape the items in place. Duh! It ended up looking very nice, but come on! Two hours to throw things in the tote bag and stick it in a cellophane bag is ridiculous.
For one thing, the heck with not letting me run with scissors. I should not be allowed to use the packing tape dispenser. I got that tape stuck to me, including around my hand, to my clothes and to the table. What was worse is when I would forget to secure the end of the tape properly and the tape was stuck to itself. That was a true frustration, trying to find the end again and peeling it off so the full width came off together.
I was totally exhausted by 4:00. I could do nothing more the rest of the day. I could not even fix anything for dinner (we ordered pizza) and was in bed by 7:00.
For me, this is one of the more frustrating things about FTD. Not only do I have so much trouble doing things but everything takes soooo long to do it. To make it worse, I still have not learned to accept help from others. I have always needed to do everything myself, no matter how many people offered to help. If I had allowed someone else to put my gift basket together, or allowed someone to provide an extra hand, it probably would not have taken as long. I take that back. It would have taken twice as long because I would have been screaming at them for not doing it the exact way I wanted.
To top it all off, today I am dealing with another FTD headache. Fortunately it is not as bad as they usually are or I would not be able to even look at the lit up computer screen and certainly not be able to put words together coherently. I have accomplished nothing today and have no incentive to do anything at all except to sit in front of the computer.
Speaking of which, on the same note as the time it took me to make the travel plans, it is the same for writing this blog. Several people have asked me how in the world I can still do it even though I have FTD. For one thing, I am fortunate that FTD hasn't stolen this ability from me yet. Secondly, the actuality is that I spend at least half a day writing an entry and editing it over and over and over. The next step is to run spell check and grammar check, again, over and over.
BUT, in addition to it being only five days until I leave for the conference, my therapist gets back this week. She took three months off to go somewhere warmer. Her husband retired so I guess this is her compromise to not retire totally herself. I am only seeing her once a month now and she did arrange a substitute should I get into a state where I had to see someone so I figured I would be okay. I did go through a couple traumatic events since she has been gone but I just couldn't bring myself to go to a stranger and go through my whole history again. I should be proud of myself that I made it through without seeing her, but I will be so very happy to be able to talk things over with her. It will make me even more relaxed to head to Chicago. This is why I often recommend that someone who has FTD, or their caregivers, might benefit from seeing a therapist. Mine is a psychologist who specializes in dementia. Perfect!
I did say only five days until I leave, didn't I? I'm not up for it today, but tomorrow I must start packing or at least pulling together everything that I need to take. This is from the person who was always up for a last minute trip anywhere, anytime, at the drop of a hat. So, yes, FTD definitely complicates everything.
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