Alzheimers and Dementia

Let's talk about Alzheimers and Dementia. They are such crappy things. Where else can you get the emptiness of a disease that hands over the caregivers, family and friends it's side affects?
Oh yes, it's horrible to the person who has the disease but more so to those around that person. My dad and granddaddy #1 (forthwith called gd#1) suffer from Alzheimers. They are in different stages now and in the same nursing home. I think I'll talk about gd#1 another day. Let's do one story at a time....

My dad is in the beginnings of the last stage. I say the beginnings because he is not quite catatonic yet. He doesn't even have a feeding tube. He has to be hand fed his pureed food by another person. He watches people. He will even laugh at times. My dad really likes to 'blow' as if he is blowing out candles on a birthday cake. He can still sit up by himself, move his arms and legs around but long ago lost the ability to walk or even move his feet to move his wheelchair. Dad is still very strong. He was a brick mason all his life and boy, will that build muscle! The strength in his arms and hands still surprises me. At times, I can still get him to "arm wrestle" with me although I tell him that he cheats. He'll take his other hand, cover mine and pull my arm down. Did I tell you that he likes to have his back scratched? Well, he does. It's sad to me that his life is now reduced to such simple pleasures as having his back scratched. I am glad that I am able to give him what he desires the most, the back scratch.

About 30 years ago, dad, being a brick mason, was working in a far off city on a large corporation's building. He was at the top of a ladder on a 50 foot scaffolding. Another man, who didn't see my dad at the top, tried to move the ladder. Dad did the swan dive, head first, to the floor. When I was little, my most important question to him (well after he got home), was, "did your nose bleed?". LOL Later, when my parents thought I was old enough to understand, I was told that he bled from his nose, his mouth and his ears. Dad's head had a fracture approximately half-way around. After he fell, he was sent to a big hospital in that city where he spent about 5 days and was then sent home. Back then, there weren't any MRI's to be done and they really didn't know much about head traumas. His brain and his face did swell but within 3 days, it went back to almost normal. They told him that he would have a headache for a while but he should be fine.

His personality change wasn't immediate. I didn't notice because I was little at the time and I have to go more on what I was told by my mother at this point. He did suffer from headaches from time to time but not migraines as one would imagine. Little by little over the years though, things began to change. He would become unreasonably angry over things. He got mad one time because I had a flat tire on my car. I was 16 years old and it was my first car and he expected me to take better care of it. I understood the 'take better care of it part' but what I didn't understand is why he was yelling at me saying that I purposely ran over a nail to make the tire flat. I wasn't the only one to whom he acted this way. My mother and my sister were treated the same way. He was never physically abusive to us as we were growing up but the verbal abuse was abundant. After I had gotten married and moved out, my sister was still living at home. He got so mad at her one day that he raised his fist to hit her. He never did hit her but the memory has not faded for my sister.

A few more years pass with odd things happening every now and again. He couldn't work with anybody anymore because "they always made him mad" or "they were sabotaging his work" or something like it. He almost cracked one day while working with a set of men on a job. They were riding in the van back to the shop when some kid (about 20 yrs old) made some crack about him being an 'old goat'. Remember how strong I said he was? Well, he wrapped his arm around the kid's neck (kid was sitting in front of him) and just about snapped his neck. The poor kid didn't mean anything by it and that was a turning point for dad. He made the decision to go into business for himself. That really didn't work out either in the end. He accused every person who worked for him of stealing from him or his client. He got to the point where he couldn't figure out where his jobs were located. He couldn't find his way home sometimes. He couldn't remember how to fix his lunch to take with him to eat on the job so he would just eat peanut butter crackers and drink pepsi all the time. The jobs dwindled down until he had nothing left to do. My mother was secretly glad because she was afraid they would be sued over a faulty job one day.

Now dad sat at home. He sat at home and ate peanut butter crackers and drank pepsi. He had a lot of time to sit and let his thoughts gather. He obsessed over thinking about bad things. By this time he was absolutely positive that my mother had spent all of his money, was stealing from him and sleeping with any man who would stand still long enough. At one point, he even told me that she was probably sleeping with my husband! These thought would just fester all day while my mother was at work. By the time she got home, he was raging. He would stay up all night long, keeping her up the whole time. She would call me, exhausted and in tears. I would go have a talk with him and he would seem to calm down. By the time she got home that evening, he would be raging once again as though I had never spoken to him. Now you would think that by this time, we would have thought there was something strange going on. I think we had been in this situation so long that it may have seemed like the natural progression of things. It just never crossed my mind at this time that he may have some sort of dementia. He was only in his late 40's.

One day while talking on the phone, my mother is telling me that 'he' has done it again. That 'he' had taken messages from an important phone call and didn't tell her about it. I asked if the person had truly called. She said yes, that person had called again after she got home. I told her that maybe it was time to call a doctor and have him checked out. I said this in a kind of sarcastic way, only half believing what I said. During this conversation, I find out that my dad didn't even remember that my daughter was sick. My daughter, at the time, was the first grandbaby on our side of the family and she was spoiled rotten by my parents, most especially my dad so it was strange that he didn't remember it.

Two days later, I get a call from my mother at work saying that she had indeed taken my dad to the doctor. It seemed that he had had several TIAs (trans ischemic attacks). TIAs are like mini-strokes. They don't do the major damage that strokes do if you have them one at a time but over time, many of them can leaving a lasting trail of destruction in their wakes. This was the beginning of the trip to Hell for us.

This is such a large burden to be unloading that I'm tired. I'll work on this more tomorrow....

Your Dementia World Hostess...... Coberae