10.10.2024 - is this the beginning of the end?

Today is the 5th day....

Yeah I don't feel like going through all that today.

Instead, Imma gonna vent.

Tuesday afternoon I got an order from Wildgrain [and I highly recommend them if you love fresh baked bread and are, like me, too lazy to do it yourself anymore].  As I stuffed things in the freezer, I noticed an odd smell which I thought was probably glue from one of the boxes and didn't think any more of it.  On Wednesday, when I got home from work, the smell was so strong that I sent a note to customer support asking them about it.  They didn't know what I was talking about, but offered to replace the goods anyway.  So of course I googled "what causes my freezer to smell like glue".  Only been here for a month, and nothing could've gone bad that quickly, but I took everything out and smelled it anyway.  The empty freezer still stank, so I concluded it was possibly a freon leak.  I then opened a ticket with maintenance, and followed up with a call to the office this morning.  When I came home, this was waiting for me

Didn't smell a thing.  My first thought was, did he even OPEN the freezer and smell?  And then....  a chill washed over me [and no I had closed the freezer door by then]

Now I'm scared because to me the smell is very strong indeed, and I don't have that good of a sniffer.

But I'm not frightened because Dr Google lists all kinds of nasty effects of freon inhalation.  

I'm terrified because of my mother.

Back in 2007, at the age of 80, my mother's landlord declined to renew her lease after 35 years.  I should've asked more questions then, but when I went back to the office, after my mother was hospitalized for Alzheimer's,  I learned that for several months prior to being denied a lease renewal, my mother had been convinced she could hear a dishwasher in the apartment below her, which was strictly against the rules.  She complained to the office and they sent maintenance to investigate, and reported to her that there was no dishwasher.  She didn't believe them, saying the woman was hiding it.  She started pounding on the woman's door at night because she said she could hear it.  They told me she even called the police once!   The office manager was Rosemary, who had gone to elementary school with me, and she knew my mother.  She told me they hated to evict her, but my mother was clearly unable to continue living there and shouldn't be living alone.

Oh, and Rosemary confirmed, just in case I had any doubts, there was no dishwasher, not even one of those little countertop jobs, and never had been 

Back at the Enclave, when I had the showdown with management and maintenance over hot water going into the toilet back 14 years ago or so, I had no doubts no matter what they said.  I've told that story before - how I finally told them if they wanted to provide me with a heated toilet every night, that was fine with me.  How the maintenance manager actually came up and apologized, admitting that he checked a toilet in an empty apartment on my tier one night just to prove I was bats, only to find out I had been telling them the truth all along.  Then when he looked at the valves, they had been set wrong.  

It didn't even occur to me to think about the dishwasher during that kerfuffle.  

But now?

Could I be smelling something that isn't there?  Like my mother could hear that dishwasher?  

Both my maternal grandmother and my mother both had dementia and then Alzheimer's.  I don't know when it started for either of them, it was pretty bad when I realized what was wrong.  

I'm 74, and since that vertigo attack in August of 2019, just haven't been as sharp or as well as I was.  I'm under a fantastic amount of stress - still working fulltime, dealing with family crisis, and just uprooted myself, moving.  

But I can smell that freezer....

And the maintenance man didn't.  

Dear God, have I just taken the first step down the same road?

So how can I do a sanity check?  I was tempted to knock on my neighbor's door and ask her to come in and smell my freezer but thought better of it.  I put the paper, and a napkin in the freezer to see if they absorb the smell.  On Saturday, I will have my organizers here to help me unpack and I'll ask them to smell the freezer too.  

And  in the meantime, I'll try not to obsess over it or worry about it.

And if anyone asks how I am doing, I'll give my usual answer of "I'm okay".

But really I am not sure I am, given the family history.

And tonight I am scared.