Contraband.  Last week I brought my mom some ointment from my acupuncturist to help her shoulder.  She has a torn rotator cuff on her right shoulder and she is not a good candidate for surgery, so she lives with the pain. The ointment might help her.  I didn't want to go through the channels at her Assisted Living place, with orders for the MedTech or a fee for medication self-administration, so I put it in the bathroom cabinet with instructions for her private-duty aide to put it on her shoulder every night before bed.  Contraband.  Against the rules. She looked at me and pointed to the jar and said, "Contraband."  She had not been talking much for the last couple of days, her dementia on a downswing that left her practically speechless for hours at a time.  But she knew Contraband, and she smiled at me, a conspiratorial smile.  We were in this together, she and I, we were buddies in the trenches of this life.