Dementia, Part 2
The previous post was until abut 5 years ago. I was finding out about dementia and mom was slowly loosing her short term memory. And then gradually parts of her long term memory. Mom loosing her long term memory was one of the thing driving my desire to blog the family stories. With mom no longer remembering, or only partly remembering, I was the only one to remember many of the stories.
But as I said, the losses were gradual. Mom was clearly slowing down physically too. The doctor and I talked about it, and I started going to visits with mom to the various doctors.
The first major change happened around 4 years ago now. We know now what happened, but it was a scary and confusing blur now. Like many seniors, mom wasn't drinking enough water. She developed a urinary infection. It started to get better (we thought it was a cold or something), but then it got toxic, fast. Mom got very sick. I called 911 when she started passing out. Turns out it had effected her heart and she had her first bout of afib.
The hospitalization was a nightmare. I still want to boot her primary doctor. She couldn't keep anything down-it was coming out both ends, she was clearly not coherent, and he wanted to send her home! About that time her heart went afib again and more tests led the heart doctors to decide she needed a pacemaker. Putting that in gave me and the hospital discharge people time to convince her doctor to get his head out of his ass and figure out what was wrong!
Once the infection was dealt with properly, then it was just a matter of getting her systems to settle down. She ended up staying in the hospital 2 weeks! Besides the pacemaker, the lasting result was the damage to her brain. We're not sure why entirely, but basically, mom decided to shut down mentally during her hospital stay. As much of a private person as she is, the vomiting and such, as well as the impersonal care had to have been beyond embarrassing to her.
Once Mom was ready to be released, she was not capable to caring for herself, especially while I was at work (yes, I was still working during most of this). So mom spent 2 weeks in a convalescent center, where she did massive amounts of physical and mental therapy. I could see great healing of her ability to do things. But there was this massive hole in her memory about the hospital stay and the sick time before. It's like it didn't exist and she didn't understand. A lot. During mom's hospitalization, I took over her financial and medical stuff. She was never really able to take care of it afterwards.
It seemed like the lapses in memory happened at a faster rate after that. She had pretty much given up driving before she got sick. Driving was no longer an option after that. Mom was aware of the fact that she was having problems remembering things. She was glad that I was handing her money and medical stuff.
Following the advice of the therapists, I was able to retrain mom to do a lot. Being useful has always been important to her. So she relearned how to wash dishes, dump trash, and even wash clothes, which had been her primary jobs before. I had to supervise more often, but mostly she was ok.
I started noticing things. For years, mom had faithfully read the daily paper. It was one of her joys. That and a cup or two of coffee in the morning. I noticed that she was just turning the pages of the paper, not really reading it. When I asked her about it, she admitted that it had become a habit. So, with her permission, I cancelled the daily delivery and kept the computer delivery for me. I have my habits too. She didn't really miss it. I noticed she had stopped being interested in watching any television. She was never big on watching tv, but she did watch the news and her beloved baseball. Now she didn't care. She really enjoyed going to a few baseball games with me that summer (even though it did tire her out), but otherwise didn't care. More and more she was going into another world.
Years ago I had noticed that both her brothers (and her father) had gone into a kind of dementia that resembled letting the world go away and living in a gray world. It seemed like they were living in a place that was sort of the past, but also sort of nothing. I remember watching my uncles fighting to remain in the present so they could talk to my mom when she visited them towards the end of their lives. Mom seemed to be edging towards that grayness.
I think it was about then that mom's primary doctor started talking about the different kinds of dementia. And I started doing my research. For insurance purposes he called it Alzheimer's, but mom really didn't fit that criteria. It wasn't until later, when mom had her brain scan that we got a better diagnosis. The doctor told me that as long as mom stayed healthy and didn't have any more big drops in brain ability, she could last for several more years. Part of me was appalled at the thought of having to care for my mom for several more years. The better part of me was glad for the time. My daughter had gotten engaged and there had been concern that mom might not be well enough for the wedding.
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