Thanksgiving

Give thanks

• Mother fell this week, and she wasn't hurt.  No bruises or bumps or breaks
• Mother still knows us for the most part.  She gets us confused, but she recognizes that we are her family.
• Mother is happy most of the time.  Most of the time she even likes where she lives, and she thinks she has a good life.
• Mother can still walk.  She may be getting closer to using a walker, but she is still mobile
• The staff at the nursing home are kind, and they do their best to meet her needs
• Most of the time, she remembers the good times.  There are dark days when unhappy memories haunt her, but most of the time her memories are happy.
• Mother enjoys the television.  What did they do with dementia patients before television?  Mother can watch the same episode of Andy Griffith over and over, and it is new and exciting each time.
• Music is still one of Mother's greatest pleasures.  She no longer gets up and dances, but she sways her hips and smiles.

• Life continues and it is good.

It Is All Relative

There is a new resident on the Alzheimer's unit.  Almost everyone who begins living on an Alzheimer's unit experiences a period of adjustment.  Some people sleep, some cry and others are more aggressive.  Mother screamed and hit and tried to get out.  She picked up furniture and threw it and beat at the doors.  Before long, she became more passive with her aggression.  She threw water on the staff and would refuse to bathe.  It was many months before she adjusted. 

What amazes me, is that residents who have lived on the Alzheimer's unit for a while are so tolerant of the behavior of new residents.  This weekend the new lady on the unit was cussing a blue streak.  She waved her glass around at lunch and screamed, "That's my g-- d--- pillow!  Give it back you s-- o- b------!"  Of course there wasn't a pillow in sight, but she ranted on.  Mother just rolled her eyes along with the other residents who are still cognizant enough to know that the woman was ranting.

Mother and I were walking to her room when they wheeled the new resident out of the dining room.  She was still cussing and threw her glass of water on another resident.  She kept screaming, "  Get out of here you g-- d--- s-- o- b------!  Get out!  I am the king, and you have to do what I say you g-- d--- s-- o- b------!"
 Mother said, "She is cussing everyone out."  I told her yes, but that the lady didn't know what she was doing.

"Well," Mother replied," At least I haven't lost my mind."

It was all I could do not to laugh.  I just hugged Mother and thought to myself, it is all relative.  That's the thing about Alzheimer's, the residents all think it is the other person who is crazy.  But maybe there is a lesson in that for all of us.

Very Confusing

My sister and I cleaned Mother's house this weekend.  While she lives at the nursing home, we maintain her house the best we can.  Besides the dusting and sweeping and washing the rugs and towels, we cleaned a closet we had not gone through before.  It was mostly full of towels and sheets, but on the highest shelves we found linen place mats, dresser scarves and old table cloths from the 1950s all neatly starched and pressed. Tablecloths on the right, dresser scarves in the middle, place mats on the left.

On the lowest shelves we found the same kind of items: a large linen tablecloth and linen place mats and napkins.  But these were messily folded, unironed, and stuffed into the shelf all together.  We  realized that the closet was a reflection of Mother's mind.  As the dementia took hold, she could no longer keep her things crisp and neat.  Like her mind, the linen was wrinkled and wadded up. She tried to place things as she always had, but as she would say, "It's all very confusing."

 There is no clear light within the mists of dementia. Today as I visited Mother she was clinging to bits of herself.  Trying to hold on.  She repeated my name over and over.  The chocolate candy I brought her ran in a long brown drool down the side of her mouth as she smiled.  I washed her face.  She repeated my name.  Hanging on.  Trying to stuff the contents of her life into a closet that has no organization and becomes "very confusing."