My close female relative is still driving both a car and a computer. Frankly, her days are numbered on both. She complains incessantly about her how her "stupid computer never works right."
The computer is fine, but in the past year or so, her mental capabilities has shown a marked decline. If I suggest that computer is fine, she takes it as an affront to her world-view. She talks about wanting to get rid of it, but so far, I've convinced
her to keep it till the end of the year. W. I came up with a metaphor
about how a computer is like a house -- sure it needs maintenance, but
you don't throw it out if, say, a rain gutter comes loose.
"Stick with it," I say. "You just need some practice," I say.
I've been trying to help this close female relative stave off loneliness and anxiety in two ways: 1) I call her once or twice a week so I can 2) help her with her computer, mostly by helping her sort through, read, and reply to her emails.
I've discovered a couple things. Outlook Express is a lousy, terrible program for someone with Alzheimer's. My relative can't remember how to compose a message. She can't remember where to check for emails. She can't remember how to close Windows. It doesn't help that all her friends send her joke messages through AOL, the kind of emails that are forwarded over and over. She has to click on "Attach" five or six times just to get to some lame flash program about dogs wearing glasses or God's artwork in a fern leaf or some other useless tidbit. Click "Attach" is not intuitive at all. I've told her we'll try to find her a nice web-based interface that makes the attachment levels more transparent.
Last week, she complained about a picture that "took over her screen." it was a city scene that had a sign that said "Zoom. Zoom" and "AT&T." I sat down with her at 9 a.m. one morning at my desk 2,000 miles away. I fired up my Microsoft Remote Assistance invitation that it had taken us half an hour to get sent the previous week. The Microsoft Remote Assistance interface simplifies the screen to make things go faster over DSL.
I spent an hour and a half running a virus scan and a spyware defense program to get rid of the pop-up malware that was running when she didn't even have a browser running. The spyware and virus scans found nothing malicious. I logged off, her screen restored, and the the irritating city image was still "taking over her screen." It was "transparent" so she could see her icons.
Finally, I had her take a screen shot, open Word, and paste. I took over her screen and saw in the open Word document that the mystery pop-up was actually just her wallpaper. It took me nearly two hours to change my relative's damn wallpaper! Two hours to figure out it was a wallpaper change and 30 seconds to "fix" it.
On one hand, I'm pleased I finally solved the "problem" from 2,000 miles away. I'm less pleased that it took so long to solve such a silly, easy thing, and that I was half an hour late to work. I was displeased that my relative expressed disappointment that I only got the computer back the way it was was, the "broken" way. She did soften up a bit when she realized I may be a bit put out by her lack of appreciation.
When I complained to W about all this, he pointed out that having a computer helps her in a third way. It gives her an external object to focus all her anger and anxiety on. If she thinks the computer is getting more messed up, it helps ease her fears about changes in her own processing capacity.
The next time I called her, I found she had taken my advice to avoid Outlook Express for drafting emails. She saved a letter to her friends in Notepad -- which she can still run. I helped her copy and paste and send her message, all while ignoring the paragraphs that talked about how her helper (that's me) wastes her time on the "broken" computer and she's only writing because I told her to.
At least she's reaching out in her own way. And taking my advice once in a while.
Helping this relative isn't the only thing distracting me from this blog. Maybe soon I'll write about my other distractions.
