And Now This

There are all kinds of degradation with Alzheimer's.  Mother faces them daily and is mostly unaware of them.  But sometimes she knows that something is wrong and she is sad.  That is how I found her today.  She was very quiet and would hardly talk as she lay in bed curled up and staring out the window.  I asked if she was ok and she said yes, but as I pressed her she said, "I did something wrong and got in trouble.  They hurt my feelings."  That was all she could tell me, and so we talked about past times.  She laughed and got caught up in the story line making up a plausible story to go along with the real past event.

But now this.  A phone call from the home.  As often is the case, Mother can't remember where her room or her bed is.  She will crawl into any bed she thinks is hers.  I often have to go down the hall checking the beds to find her.  Today she had laid down in her roommates' bed.  The roommate got upset and spanked Mother with a shoe.  Spanked her hard enough to leave a welt on Mother's rear end.  The roommate was moved immediately.  But that is the problem with dementia.  People no longer have control over their actions and responses. 

Mother has been on the giving end of such things, but not to the degree of hurting someone.  She has thrown water on people, verbally threatened others and thrown things.  It just grieves me to know that someone hit her and hit her hard.  It also breaks my heart that she thought she had done something wrong but had no idea what it was.  At some core level she knew life was out of whack, but she couldn't tell me what it was.

I hate this disease and what it does.  The loss of control of ones body and mind is bad enough, but it also causes the victims to lash out and to sometimes become violent.  Now Mother has had to endure a physical attack, and I couldn't protect her from it.  Tomorrow she will not remember it at all, but I will always remember and the bruise will be on my heart for a long time.