Very scary experience this afternoon.
At 8am we dropped off my Civic at the Honda Service center close to the Interstate in Round Rock 15 minutes from the house.
We’ve done that route literally hundreds of times in the past 30 years (car dealerships, restaurants, hospitals, shopping).
We picked it up at 3:30pm, then I drove out of the service place with wife intending to follow me home.
After getting out on the street to the intersection I noticed she was slow leaving her parking space, but the light turned green and I had to get going.
A half block up the road I discovered I had left my cellphone at the service desk, so immediately tried to circle back thru a McDonalds, but was forced to make a U-turn. Rush hour traffic was starting and was pretty heavy.
Anyway, retrieved the phone and headed home quickly to try to catch up with her.
Arrived home…and no wife.
I knew she had no plans to make any stops, so I became very worried and got back in my car to backtrack to look for her.
I called her cellphone to find out where she was.
When she answered she said “I’m lost and have no idea where I’m going”. Of course that scared me shitless, especially when I asked her if she saw any familiar business buildings or street signs.
She answered in the negative - and her voice was getting very weak.
I was ready to call 911, but then she saw a road sign and a school campus, so I had a rough idea where she was.
I told her to pull into any business parking lot, describe it to me, then wait for me to come get her to lead her home.
I found her at a gas station by the Cracker Barrel restaurant and had her follow me home.
On the way back I noticed she was driving slightly erratically, then it dawned on me she was probably having another one of her low glucose “spells” like she had just before Thanksgiving two years ago. We had to call 911 for that one because she looked like she was going into a catatonic state.
Then I remembered she only had her chocolate breakfast drink before we left the house that morning, and no lunch because she went to the 12:30pm Ash Wednesday Mass at her church (fasting before communion). Plus she ate nothing afterwards.
Luckily we were in our neighborhood by that time and she safely made it into our driveway.
Once inside she sat on the couch just staring at nothing, so I brought her some grapes to eat, then one of her power bars. After that she became more alert and responsive.
I laid down the law that from now on she has to have something more substantial for breakfast and to eat a sandwich for lunch, just to keep herself going until dinner.
She can be very stubborn about that - in fact when I heated up a pot of leftover spaghetti and meat sauce, she would only eat a few small spoons of the pasta.
I am at wit’s end about this attitude- and it isn’t doing my mental state & blood pressure any good.
As I said, it scared me more than I’ve ever been.
Told her if this is the way she wants to be, then we were going to move into the nice assisted living community next to our neighborhood.