Unforgettable Incident

On the 20th of August I went to see my sister in Tokyo. I was supposed to taker her to the hospital the next day. In the evening my sister took me out for dinner in a restarant near the station. On the way to the restaurant I was surprised to see my sister's shoulders tilted on one end. In other words, the position of her left shoulder is higher than the other one. Moreover I noticed she walked rather slowly. After dinner we we went her home. She was busy filling out applying forms for the French newsweekly magazine, "Le Mond". To my surprise she had already written three letters and addresses on the envelopes. Now she's confused which one is the correct one to be sent to the newspaper company. She asked me a lot of questions and what should she do about it. Since it was written in French words, I didn't know what to do, either. Meanwhile she started asking me the same questions over and over, "Like this? Like this? Like this?" I was getting sick and tired of the repeated questions. On top of that I was under the weather on that day, because I had louder ear ringing. At last I blew a fuse, because I couldn't stand the same question any more. I decided to take the plunge and spoke up to her, "Sister, I come to see you all the way from Osaka to Tokyo to help you. You can't go to the hospital alone. You can't change trains in the congested Metropolitan area. I knew that was a taboo word I shouldn't have said. All of a sudden my sister screwed up her eyes and said, "Get the fuck out of here! I have never asked you to come. Besides I can go to the hospital all by myself. I'm warning you, brother, I'm not suffering from dementia or Altzheimer's or whatever you want to call it. I am just being forgetful. As a preventitive measure I go to the hospital. But I don't see a doc. I just get medicine at a drug store. Now be gone!" What she said to me made me cross. On second thought I avoided arguing with her. After all she is a patient. I glimpsed at my watch. It said 10:00 pm. I gathered it's too late to get the last train back to Osaka. At this late hour of the night it's impossible. Nexr morning I woke up early and walked out of her house softly while she was sleeping. I was still mad at her. I went to Tokyo station. I calmed down and began to feel guilty about my sister, "Can she ever today go to the hospital alone?" Then, I called her husband's brother and asked him if he could take my sister to the hospital today. Thanks God! He said. "Sure. No problem!" After that i jumped in Shinkansen and went back home. I told my wife everything about the incident last night. I am glad to hear that she promised that she would visit my sister next time on behalf of me. Now I'm grateful to her for taking care of my sister every month. As far as I am concerned, I had kind of "Burn Out" after the incident. I felt uneasy every day and it seemed my ear ringing getting worse. I visited the doctor many times and ended up taking various tablets and pills to overcome the shocking incident. Regarding my sister she seems to be doing great. When my wife visited her afterwards, she said, "Sadaji? Speaking of him, I haven't seen him in ages. He is sissy!" She giggled. I am joking around a little bit. But my sister forgot completely what happend to me last August, that is my unforgettable incident. I'd say it's one of tragic symptoms of Alzheimer's. After all said and done this disease is so complicated and troublesome that I don't know how to deal with it.