Dementia - The Great Evil

Dementia - The Great Evil
13 August 2012

It is a very sad day, when the tide turns and a child becomes a parent and a parent becomes a child.  A friend of mine is going through a very tough time as her mom was recently diagnosed with Dementia and it has become impossible for them to care for her at home.  She has bouts of aggression and severe stubbornness, when she’s wilful and a danger to herself and those around her.  Instances where she won’t get undressed before she gets into the shower, to name but one example.  She can’t do the most basic things for herself and requires constant supervision.  She needs help going to the bathroom, showering, getting dressed and even eating.  The other day, she was being particularly difficult and fell in the shower necessitating 16 stitches. 

What an awful, evil and debilitating illness.  Stealing someone’s mind from the inside out.  What is absolutely heart breaking is that she has moments of absolute crystal clarity.  Moments when she knows that she is not well.  Moments when she feels that she is a burden to her family and those around her.  Moments when she cries mournfully for all that she has lost.  Moments when she looks at you and knows exactly who you are.  Moments when she wants to go home and be with her husband again.  Moments where she admits that she’s resigned herself to living where she is now, but still yearns for days gone by.

And then, in the blink of an eye.  Without any warning, between one second and the next, she is gone again, in her inside world.  A place that only she can see.  Where she was having a two-way conversation and making sort of sense just a moment ago, she all of a sudden now looks at you with a blank look in her eye.  So surprised to see you sitting there with her, if she even recognizes you at all.  As if you hadn’t just spent the preceding time with her already.  I asked her if she was happy three times and spaced my questions over a period of about 10 minutes, and each time I got a completely different answer, if I even got an answer.  At times her words can’t seem to cross the jumble that is her mind.  She loses her train of thought completely and stops midsentence, smiling, completely nonplussed.  To be honest, she is incoherent most of the time.

How does one cope with this as an adult and a child? Having to put your mom in a home where everyone around her has so clearly also lost their minds?  Initially, they weren’t going to put her in a home and looked after her themselves.  But as things got progressively worse, it became increasingly difficult.  Then for a short period of time, she went to a sort of day care for Dementia patients.  My friend wept.  She says on her first day, it felt like she was dropping off a toddler at playschool for the first time.  She took her mom with her little bag and walked her inside.  She handed her mom over to the nurse and they toddled off together, her mom not even looking back once.  Already forgetting.  When she fetched her that afternoon, she asked her if she’d had lunch there and her mom said that they hadn’t fed her.  But evidently they had, because she was not hungry when they offered her food at home.  And then later she said that the food was very wet at the day care.  We’re assuming she had soup.

What a scary world for her to be in.  And how one’s reactions and responses change, given time.  Where initially my friend was desperate for a cure for her mom, this too has changed.  At the very beginning, they did a round of doctors, scans and operations.  But time is a great equalizer and now my friend’s greatest wish is that her mom doesn’t come out of her inside world so much.  It would be merciful if she could not remember her previous life.  It only causes heart ache and pain and there will be no cure for her.  Her ‘aware’ moments are becoming fewer.  And perhaps this is for the best.  She can’t mourn that which she can’t remember.  How can we send a man to the moon or a probe to Mars, yet not find a cure for Dementia or that other evil, Alzheimer’s?  I’m praying with every fibre of my being that this does not happen to those that I love around me.  And should the fate befall me, I hope that my inside world is a beautiful place.  And my loved ones can rest assured, that they will be there with me, stuck in a time warp of happier memories.