The only service I could find that David qualified for was the dial-a-ride bus.  When we filled out the application, it seemed like a way to preserve some independence and a reprieve from constant driving, especially for trips to the gym in the Minnesota winter. 

Driving him everywhere might have been easier.  David had trouble with calendars, so he couldn’t schedule the rides.  He sometimes couldn’t read a clock or keep straight the difference between day and night, so he would stand on his porch with his gym bag for long stretches of time, at any hour in the 24, while the stacked stones of his porch whispered to or about him.  If the bus service called to reschedule the ride, he might or might not be able to answer the call, and he couldn’t listen to the voicemail.  He could often use the cell phone to call me – but because time was a mystery, those calls might come when I was in class or in a meeting or in the middle of the night.  I’d been diagnosed with Meniere’s shortly before David was diagnosed with LBD, and I now had one deaf ear.  If my hearing ear was on the pillow, I might miss the call.  By the time I got a call or a notification of a missed call, he’d be agitated and desperate and terrified, and he’d be certain that the driver had refused to pick him up and I’d refused to answer his calls.  I could show him that I’d attempted to call him back 23 times, but any call he’d missed was a call that hadn’t been made.

Possible solution: scrap the dial-a-ride service and drive to the gym.  But: David liked the independence that the bus offered (and knew how much I hate winter driving).

Possible solution: make sure he’s on the porch with his shoes on and his gym bag ready before I leave for work.  But: he’d think of something else he wanted to bring to the gym and take off his shoes to go back in the house.  Also: he’d take the bus to the gym and come home again but then take a nap and wake up thinking it was another day, so he’d struggle into his shoes and get his gym bag and stand on the porch again.

Possible shoe solution: buy slip-on shoes, like loafers.  I did.  He kept trying to shove his toes into the heel of the shoe.

Possible solution: get a simpler cell phone and call him 15 minutes before the bus was scheduled to come.  But: he couldn’t reliably use even the familiar landline with my number on speed dial. 

Possible solution: find a college student who could live with David in exchange for overseeing the bus service or driving him to the gym every day.  But: David wasn’t having it.  He didn’t want anybody in his house. 

Possible solution: hire a caregiver to come for two or three hours a day, to help with cleaning and cooking and be there to make sure he got on the bus.  But see the previous failed solution: David wouldn’t pay a caregiver and didn’t want anyone in his house.

When the bus service worked, it was a godsend.  But sometimes it was chaos on wheels.  Sometimes the bus came five minutes early and David would be unable to get his shoes on.  Sometimes he’d get home from the gym and his door would be standing open, the snow drifting across the threshold.  He didn’t lock the door because he wasn’t sure he could unlock it, and the wind would force it open. 

Daily bus drama figured large in our lives for two years.  At best, the service almost worked, and he was almost safe.  But that situation, like everything else, was precarious. An infection or a fall or something unidentifiable would change everything.  David might wander, his agitation might become hostility, he might not be able to manage the change of shoes – any of those would spell the end of bus service.