Adventures with Renee Gibson

Adventures with my sweet sister, Renee, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 2012.
It was decided at the last minute on July 17th, 2013, that Renee should return to Texas with Larry and me and stay with us for an undetermined period of time. Rosanne, with whom she had been living for the past year, needed a break. She broke the news to Renee and helped her get packed. They met us at the airport on the 18th and we headed back to San Antonio, Texas.
She was confused but otherwise did very well on our trip to Texas. We got her unpacked and settled in for the night.
The first couple of weeks were interesting. She wanted to go shopping almost every day.


One of the good things about her living here with us, is that someone is almost always home with her, contrary to when she lived with Rosanne and Steve, who both work full time. Renee chooses not to attend church with us, but I continue to invite her. We meet at 8:30 am, which is very early for her. Hopefully when the time changes in January she may come with us. We have been taking her to our Empty Nesters FHE and she seems to be enjoying that and the people there. Occasionally, she will join in our our conversations, but usually just sits and listens.
One Friday and Saturday she had a really hard time. I had Larry stay home from church with her. When I got home, she was very dizzy and said she needed to go to the hospital. We took her to a local hospital emergency room where she got even worse. She started shaking all over and was out of control. She told the nurse that she needed to go to the bathroom and that now it was too late because everything was all wet. The nurse helped her take her pants off, but she was still dry. Renee got angry when the nurse told her that, since she insisted that she was wet.
They gave her a pill and then gave her an injection of anti-anxiety medication. After awhile she calmed down was able to relax. Since she has been on this new prescription, she has not had any episodes of dizziness.
On Tuesday after the episode at the hospital, Renee, Lois Jones and I spent the morning at the Natural Bridge Animal Safari. Renee had such a wonderful time looking at all the animals and feeding them. She kept wanting to get out of the car so she could get closer to them and feed them with her hand, rather than throwing the food on the ground like we were told to do. Finally, some of the animals came and ate out of her hand, which made her very happy. We ended up driving through the park twice. She especially loved getting to finally see living, breathing Texas Longhorn cattle. She has wanted to see them since she arrived in Texas.
On the 28th of September, Cindy, Renee, Lois Jones, Larry and I headed off to Galveston, Texas where we boarded the Carnival Cruise Ship Triumph for a five day cruise to Progreso and Cozumel, Mexico. Renee did amazingly well, considering everything was new to her. She followed us around. Occasionally, she would get distracted by someone or something and would stop to visit. We would look back and not see her, so we would have to retrace our steps until we found her.
Every night we had dinner in the Paris Dining Room together. There were two nice couples at the table next to us that we really enjoyed. On the second night, Renee accidentally dropped her napkin on the floor, and the man, Joe, sitting next to her bent over and picked it up for her. She put her hands around his neck and rubbed his head. Then it became a joke and she did it several times over the next few nights. He was kind and tender with her, even giving her a kiss on the cheek. One night at dinner, the waiters did some dancing to perform for us. Joe had Renee stand up and he danced with her. She had such a great time. He gave her a big hug at the end and a kiss on the cheek. Renee said, "You made my day!" Cindy added, "You made her year!" We all had a good laugh.
The last two nights Renee wanted to go to bed after dinner, but she wasn't asleep when we returned from the stage production. She was still up and going through everyone's things. Once, she found the bag of cookies that Lois had made and shared with us. She had dumped them out on her bed and there were crumbs everywhere.
One of the things that amazed me was the huge amount of food that she ate at every meal. There was a buffet line where we ate breakfast and lunch everyday. Renee would fill 3 large plates and eat everything on all the plates.I was amazed that anyone could eat that much food.
After our return home, Renee seemed to sleep for the next couple of days. When she would finally get up, she seemed confused and didn't know what was going on or what she wanted to do. After eating something and taking her anti-anxiety medication, she finally would snap out of it and seemed pretty happy. I think the confusion was a result of so much change for five days on the cruise. When we got home she asked me if we had to get back on the boat.