Reality Bites (even for a pragmatist)

As we begin to close out the summer season, we sit here in our condo and I have to wonder what ever happened to living the RV lifestyle?   I had put together a great plan to travel across the western United States and winter in Quartzsite, Arizona.   Yet the RV is in storage and we are sitting here in New Hampshire.   I admit that I am a planner.    But I am starting to wonder if this is a personality flaw.  I won't ask Pam because she would just say that it goes along with my major personality flaw of being an engineer!  The later is a personality flaw that I embrace with vigor.  But for all of the planning that I have done for our RV trips, not one single trip has worked out.  And most never even got started. Some of that was due to COVID, but the most recent was not.

Pam has had a difficult summer, health-wise.   This was complicated by the need to find new doctors, since we no longer reside in Maine. But our planned western trip was cancelled because of these issues.  The good news is that we finally have a diagnosis.  The bad news is that we now have a diagnosis. Pam has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's.  I won't talk about any specifics, as we are all somewhat familiar with the symptoms of this disease and that there is currently no cure.  There are some new meds that can slow the progress... to a degree. Pam is aware of her diagnosis, but we have tried to be somewhat secretive with her health information.

 

With the eight-month western trip cancelled, it appears that we will be returning to Silver Springs, Florida for the winter.  We reserved a site in the park before we left in May and continue to communicate with a few of our former neighbors there.  There is some apprehension on my part, concerned with what living out of about 225 square feet for six months means with Pam's condition.  But being far away from the New England winters is what she wants.

 

So I have begun planning the 1,300 mile journey.  I expect that we'll leave New Hampshire around the 10th of October and take about ten days to get there.  We can't travel through Pennsylvania without taking a few days to visit our friends Terri and John.  Touring Gettysburg is on our bucket list, but I think we'll skip it on this trip.  And normally we would try to visit my niece on our way through Georgia, but she will be visiting New England in the same time frame.

 

So I would ask that you keep us in your thoughts and prayers.  I am trying to learn as much as I can about being an Alzheimer's caregiver.  The girls have been very helpful and I think that we have most of the legal documents in place already.   Enjoy the rest of your summer and stay safe.