Early Warnings

Alzheimer's patients experience a long, slow decline in mental function.  For Mother, we first noticed that she could not remember anything associated with a date unless she wrote it down.  For a time, her calendar was covered with little notes.  We found notes written on sticky notes, backs of envelopes, scraps of paper.  This helped her for a while.  She even commented that she needed to write it down to remember it.  Eventually, she could not manage the calendar, and we even found that she was using two different ones. 

Because the disease manifests differently in every person, it is difficult to judge how the disease might progress.  For Mother, it didn't take long to go from notes on the the calendar to not remembering at all.  We had to call her several times as we drove to visit.  She would forget that we were coming.  I always called as I drove up the lane because I didn't want her to get scared when she saw a car coming.  I would have her go to the window and watch, and I would roll down the window and wave while I talked to her.  She stopped cooking too.  The saddest time for me was watching her struggle to figure out how to use the bread maker.  She could not even make sense of the directions, so we just put it away.

That is one of the greatest griefs for me.  To see my bright, intelligent mother so reduced.  Most of the time now she is beyond that frustration.  But on days where clarity is sharp, she still grieves for her own loss of memory.  She used to ask why this was happening to her.  Why indeed.