When Nadine and I became a couple in March 2009, she was 40 years old – the picture above was taken about that date. Today she is turning 48 and I want to express my thanks for being allowed to be a major part of her life for almost eight years now.

I reduced her dosage of Haloperidol to five drops yesterday and she was already awake when I got up at 7:30 this morning. We will see how the day goes and wether she will manange to be awake or not.

Even though the general situation isn’t good at all, I want to repeat last year’s birthday song once more. Call it defiance or call it unbreakable hope…

It’s Nadine’s birthday tomorrow and I’ve got no idea what will happen. I am told that she tried to organize something with her friend Annette during my absence and I wanted to ask her about her plans today. Unfortunately, this was impossible, because she is sleeping almost all the time since yesterday 9 p.m. She was awake for one hour when we had visitors but fell asleep again immediately after they left.

As I told you already, her state deteriorated last Wednesday and she went almost comatose. Most of her medication was cancelled then and on Friday and Saturday she became surprisingly better. But her hallucinations have returned too. It reminded me of her state from the end of November when she had to be treated with Haloperidol. A few drops at a small but constant rate each day did the job then.

Having this in mind, me and her homecaring nurse decided to put these antipsychotics which were called off on Wednesday too back on her menue. The backside of this substance is it’s sedating side-effect. I gave her five plus ten drops during the last two days and now she’s asleep for almost 22 hours. Her sleep is calm and quiet and her breathing is regular and sounds relaxed, so I’m not too worried. But I’ve got no idea how this will continue and how it will affect her birthday. We have to wait and see…

I arranged a few things on our terrace in front of the living room window where Nadine’s bed is placed. When I open the curtains and turn her to her right hand side, the picture above is more or less what she’s looking at. She is doing this right now while I’m writing these words and prepares to start into another day.

Two days ago, she was hardly adressable and unable to speak. This started to improve yesterday when we had a few visitors and it became even better this morning. She competely gets what I’m telling her, she is responding and she also comes up with questions or things on her own.  First thing she told me this morning was that she doesn’t want to die.

I received many e-mails with wishes and offers to help and I’m very thankful for that.  Having visitors yesterday evening seemed to have brought some life back to Nadine. I asked her if she liked it and she clearly said yes. As it Is hard for me to talk to her the whole day long – I’m running out of topics – I think it’s a good thing for her to get some stimuli from the outside.

With her being unable to play a complete part in conversation, you should come up with some idea of entertainment: tell her a story, read something to her, play her a few songs or make music by your own , sing something, … Another idea is that you come in pairs or groups and talk amongst each other so she can listen and join in at times. In order to coordinate this, please use my e-mail or landline phone number given on the contact site of this blog.

Many of you told me about their relation with and feelings towards Nadine by e-mail. I want to encourage you once again to go public and post it ont the blog so that everybody can take part. Remember that these e-mails will be lost some day while the blog can be conserved forever. You can use the comment function or the wall of wishes for small messages but I also want you to offer to do your own posts: just write a text with one of the shared experiences you had with Nadine, tell us about your special relation to her, express your feelings for her or come up with an homage if you like to. Send it to me by e-mail and I will put it online under your name. It would be nice if you could send a picture or a link to a suitable song too. Please do it, Nadine likes the idea very much!