Alzheimer's Disease, dementia,...

I watch General Hospital.  Over many months they have had a story about Alzheimer's Disease.  Mike Corbin, father of Sonny Corinthos, has Alzheimer's Disease.  They have told the story well, detailing Mike's gradual evaporation, from a vibrant, funny, and very in the moment man, slowly disappearing into a terrible state that is the final stages of an insidious illness.

My mother died from Alzheimer's disease.  As I watch this past Monday's episode Mike's friend Stella is talking about what might constitute a "good" day for Mike.  She is asking: ..what do mean by good? Is he trapped in some memory of the past? Is he lucid or stoic as if in a trance....

And my thoughts turn to my mother.  She was not trapped in the past, struggling with awful memories as some of her roommates at the nursing home were.  Lillian was just disappearing very slowly.  I think that was a good thing, but it hurts to think of it.  To have one's self disappear gradually, until they are almost bland, and yet she retained enough self to not become nearly catatonic.

My mother had one roommate who seemed to be reliving an unsettling memory. The poor woman would talk to someone not present, and it was not a pleasant memory, but a slightly fearful memory.  And she relived this event in cycles,...it came back to her and started over again at regular intervals.  No one could interrupt the scenario once it began in her.  The poor woman; I never heard her have any kind of conversation with anyone - she just relived a fraught piece of her life over and over again.  And she was not the only one going though that.

Others rant angrily, over and over repeating the same tirade of apparent nonsense.  The staff struggles to calm them down once they begin the rant, because these unfortunate ones work themselves into a near frenzy.  It is sad and frightening to witness.  May God grant them peace.

Too many sit, nearly catatonic. They may cooperate and do what the staff asks of them: please sit here or let's do this.... Or a spoon is placed in a hand and a the meal indicated, and perhaps the patient will feed him or her self, or not, in which case someone will sit and patiently feed them.

Really the most one can do is be patient. Sit with them. Read to them - even if it appears that they are not listening. Be present. I believe they know someone is with them.

My mother began to disappear, but it was gentle for her. There were no fraught memories, she was as lucid as the disease would allow.  She was not animated, but she was not still, in control of her movements, able to move about in her wheelchair.  I don't know much of her behaviour when I was not present.  I know that she knew when it was Saturday, because that was the day I visited her.  Saturdays the staff would wake her, she would open her eyes and softly say, "It's Saturday. My daughter is coming to visit me today."  It was the only day of the week that she did not ask her care-givers, "what day is it?" every 15 minutes. I could animate her for a few hours once a week.  But she was disappearing, slowly fading away.  

it is a hard thing to witness

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