Friday is totally quiet, no calls. Mike calls her to check on her after he gets home. Again, she seems O K but she is confused about who Mike is.He tells her he will visit on Sat morning instead of the 'usual' 9 A M call. She hesitates but says that will be good. She launches into her usual desire to get out of where she is. Mike says they will try to work things out tomorrow. Thirty minutes later Ruth calls me to see if I am coming over. I explain about going to Kierstins birthday party and Kadens game...she sighs and says she understands. She says," I guess you know I am going to have a guest tomorrow." I tell her I do know that." She asks," How do you know that?' I say,"Because I was here when Mike talked to you." She hesitates, which usually means she is either confused or she thinks I am crazy and then says," Oh yeah, well I don't want to talk about it anymore now, I know you are busy so I will let you go.I just miss you so much." I tell her ," I know," followed with ," I know you will have a good visit tomorrow, don't be worried." She impatiently says," I don't worry about things like this, will I see you tomorrow, I really miss you like the dickens." I tell her I will see her tomorrow afternoon and then Cindy will be up the next day. She says she is looking forward to that.
Mikes visit on Saturday was as expected. She acted like she knew who he was most of the time. He was there for about 2 hours. He got to see a lot of her behaviours for the first time through new eyes now that he knows what is going on . Needless to say, between the smoking, patterned behaviours, confusion, sadness, and Ruths desire to leave Corinthians, he was exasperated by the time he left. Visiting with Ruth is an exhausting experience. Our main desire is to make her happy but that just ain't gonna happen. Next on the list of desires ,we would like to help her not be so confused...that ain't gonna happen for more than the few minutes after each conversation.Then it is right back to confusion as normal. Our list of desires has had to change daily. Now we are down to keeping her safe and comfortable. We (Cindy and all her personas, Mike and all his personas , and I) often feel like we are failing Ruth. Simply put, we can not fulfill any of our desires when it comes to her . As of this writing, she is still miserable, she literally hates where she is, we know no more about what is wrong with her than when we started the Drs visits, she refuses to eat the food from Corinthians, she is drinking more and smoking more than ever, she is more confused about who is who each day, she is not grooming herself properly ,she thinks she has unlimited finances ,and she is tired and grumpy most of the time. THIS IS NOT WHAT WE HAD HOPED FOR....
I visited Ruth Saturday afternoon. She was unusually agitated. She was washing clothes(3 pairs of undies at a time) and you would have thought she was washing for 20. She was really involved in what I will now just term as patterning. She does the same thing over and over and over again ,ie... she sits on the bed, takes off her shoes, puts the laces in and puts them on the shelf in her closet.She then returns to the bed, turns to the shelf by the bed, straightens her shelf top, folds the covers back, fluffs the pillows, sits down on the bed, fluffs the pillows, pulls up each cover separately, flattens them, reaches over and gets a cigarette, picks up her ashtray, goes through the same routine about she shouldn't be smoking in the room but hopes she won't get caught, apologizes about the smoke but adds she won't blow it in my direction.She settles in for a chat and then removes her covers in the reverse order,stands and does her ashtray routine,puts everything back in order on her shelf, walks over to look out the window to see if anyone is smoking,asks me if there is anything I want and then heads back to repeat the previous pattern again and again and again until either I leave or she actaully keeps her shoes on this time to go out of the room. As I said , she seems unusually agitated and distrtacted today. I know she is not feeling well and that she is tired as she said she has been up since 1 A. M. . She seemed to have enjoyed her visit with Mike but she adds that he was just wrong about several things. I am not in the mood for the long discussion that will be involved if I ask her what he was wrong about so I stay silent.After a couple of hours she decides she is going to take her pants back to dry so I say I need to go. She says she understands. I remind her that Cindy will be visiting tomorrow. She seems happy and relieved. I leave her talking to the dryers...
Sunday is Cindys day. She does a miraculous job with taking Ruth out. Only those who have dealt with Ruth lately in public know what a risk you are taking when you take her out. Hopefully, Ruth will be more open to going out now. It will be great for her to get away from Corinthians some. Normally, she will not go anywhere.
GREAT JOB CINDY>CINDY
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