Success! They'll put orders for bloodwork in the mail to me so that I can go to the lab near our house. I eagerly await finding out exactly what percentage of my blood is cheese and what percentage is leftover Easter candy.

See, smonster? I knew you could do it.

It is my surgery week! I'm going to pretend that means I will soon be fixed, although it's still 3.5 more days! I would kind of like to sleep through the whole time, but work expects me to work.

Dementia is just a fucking asshole. I swear. Calm~ma to Jack and coping-ma to the rest of y'all.

Dana, sorry you're in so much pain. Hope the next few days go quickly and that the surgery gives you quick relief.

One small pre-cavity, so I have to come back next week to get that filled. I expected that. Also, I may need to get a nightguard. I don't really grnd but I guess I clench. I may try the cheapo sports mouthguard route before shellling out the big bucks.

I use the drug store mouthguards and they work.

Dementia is just a fucking asshole. I swear.

This. My Nana still knows what year it is and why she's in assisted living (thank GOD she and my grandfather moved there voluntarily after she broke her arm for the third time going up and down their old terrifyingly narrow stairs), but she keeps calling my mother up FURIOUS to know why she hasn't been invited to my brother's wedding yet. (She has been. And she RSVP'd. Three months ago.)

I am so grateful that my mother's dementia was so mild, and really seemed just old age normal for the most part. She did get annoyed if we challenged her on things she said that were wrong, so we just didn't.

It is my biggest fear. I don't want my family to have to endure that level of pain. I really am doing everything I can to prevent if that is at all possible.

Ugh Steph, I totally feel for Tim and his brothers. Also, damn, so many of us have had to deal with dementia.

Yeah, there's a real grieving process here for Tim and his brothers, because Jack is slowly losing what made him the dad they knew and loved and looked up to for more than 50 years. It's a really cruel disease.

It's a really cruel disease.

God yes. I remember with my mom thinking of caring for her as giving back to her the nurturing and care that she had given me. But as devastating as her dementia was, it never took away her sweetness, so caring for her was made easier in some ways.

Jack is still good-natured for the most part; he just wants out of that assisted living facility so much that he's shouting at Oldest Brother.

And he has a lot of functional memory -- his current problem is that he can't retain new information. But a couple of weeks ago he went to Mass at his assisted living facility, and the priest was a man who had been the priest at Jack's regular parish years and years ago. And Jack remembered him perfectly and they chatted about stuff from back in the day, but if you asked him why he was at the assisted living facility, he would genuinely not remember that he has a suprapubic catheter (which he can't care for). He's surprised by it every single time he goes to the bathroom, and it is an actual tube that sticks out of his abdomen. You'd think that would be something a person could remember due to its constant presence, but that's what his dementia is doing.