A pork chop, a router & 2 pairs of socks

 And spaghetti.  I left out spaghetti because it would have made the title too long, but it was "a pork chop, spaghetti, a router & 2 pairs of socks."  When I type it here it sounds like the punchline to a joke, but instead, it is the reason I am awake at 3:44 AM looking under my husband's bed.  More than a year into his Lewy Body Dementia (LBD) diagnosis, the hallucinations are a way of life now, so here I am at 3:44 AM, looking under his bed for the pork chop, spaghetti, router and 2 pairs of socks.  He is quite sure the creature under the bed has taken them and, as a result, he is agitated.  I bend over and peer under the bed.  Nope, no creatures there, hoping this is enough to put the issue (and him) to rest.  But he is not satisfied with my cursory glance so I find myself on my hands and knees, peering under the bed for a pork chop-stealing creature.  There is none and so at last to bed I go.  Or so I had hoped.  As it turns out, if the creature under the bed hasn't stolen the missing items, then where are they?

I don't know what to do.  It's the middle of the night.  I'm exhausted and I'm frustrated.  The doctors tell me not to argue with him when he's hallucinating but the doctors aren't here looking for socks and pork chops so I don't know what to do.  I try reasoning with him.  I don't know why, I know it won't work but I don't understand how he doesn't understand the ridiculousness of the situation.  But he doesn't.  And I'm weary.  While looking for the pork chop and socks, I "find" the remote control and turn on West Wing, the surest way to distract him.  And just like that, the crisis is over.

I head back to my bedroom (we have separate bedrooms now exactly because of this) and I snuggle back into bed, Jed Bartlett's familiar speech patterns muffled in the background.  But I can't sleep.  Again.  Exhausted but awake.  I toss and turn for a while but sleep won't come so I get up to check on him.  He is sleeping soundly.  And while I wish that I, too, was sleeping soundly, I am not.  I am, instead, starting a blog, chronicling the sometimes hilarious, generally unsettling and relentlessly exhausting life with Lewy Body.