Alzheimer’s disease is not a death sentence such as the one that comes with cancer which can often be treated and for some even cured but its carries its own tragedy. For some relatives and friends it may even mean the end of that person’s life as they know them.
A possible reaction from relatives and friends
For example, my brother-in-law refused to accept this diagnosis for his mother then gradually, his visits were further apart. When she passed away, at her funeral, he said that in his mind and in his heart, because of how different at the end she was compared to her true personality, he considered her dead for the last few years. Both my husband’s heart and mine broke when we heard his statement. We both thought that despite the changes that occurred in her during her years of fighting this disease, she was still their caring and loving mother no matter what. She was a kind and generous person that deserved to be remembered as herself.
The changes observed in your loved one, at the beginning
When I first moved in with my husband and his mother, she was quite independent, especially since she had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease ten years earlier. Nonetheless, in the following 4 ½ years, her life, her skills and her abilities gradually disappeared as everyone, including herself, knew her before.
About three years before I moved in with them, her husband’s death accelerated the changes in her making it impossible for her to be on her own approximately two years later. That is when my husband moved back in with her. Financial institutions and utilities companies started to share their concerns about her forgetfulness and increasing confusion, which is when he took care of her finances.
Then, she was following her daily routine by getting ready to go to work and leave to take the bus despite the fact that she retired about a year earlier. My husband, had to sleep in the living room and could never afford to be in a deep sleep as he was always needing to keep an eye on her, stopping her from leaving the house and walking around who knows where. Every day, for approximately a year, it was the same thing, he had to convince her that she was not working anymore which was not easy as she was getting tenacious and emotional about it.
The changes, as time goes by
When I first moved in, I noticed that her short term memory was very poor so we had to watch that she would shut off the stove after she used it or to turn of the water when she was washing dishes. I also noticed that she was living mostly in the past, reminiscing often about stories from her childhood.
Then, she started to forget how to cook, not to feed the dog as often so we had to hide his food from her. She started to forget to take a shower, put on her nightgown or not fully understanding what we were saying to her. She also started to show signs of dementia. Instead of realizing that she was thinking, her thoughts appeared to her as the voice from her late husband. She became more frustrated gradually becoming even aggressive at times and screaming at the dryer as she thought it was the source of the voice. That is when my husband started to take care of the laundry for her.
When the changes are getting worse
As years flew by, the changes became more important and appeared more often. She would misunderstand how to do things. She was forgetting to eat, to go to the washroom, to shower and brush her teeth and would scratch off any scab to such an extent that we had to put bandages on her arms as they were raw and bloody.
She would also invent stories about innocent neighbors being bad according to her, getting upset with her dog and people around her for no reason and yelling and screaming for hours, depriving everyone of sleep, especially herself. That is when we discovered that as she lost her ability to speak and understand us, it became her way to tell us that she was in pain. A few days prior to her death, we found out that she had cancer.
My husband and I, particularly my husband, as her older son refused to get involved in her care, decided to care for her and to allow her to live as long as possible in her own house because we felt that she deserved that much. Alzheimer’s disease did not only take away her memories but also the joy of being a grandmother to her young grandson and from meeting her granddaughter. In my opinion, she is an angel in heaven who is finally free of the heavy chains of Alzheimer and cancer. After all, she was an angel on Earth to anyone who had the opportunity to get to know her.
Alzheimer’s disease affected my husband’s family and mine for years. This is the reason why I wish to share our experience with you so you do not feel alone and have an idea of possible changes to come in the future. If you wish to learn more information about Alzheimer disease, I invite you to go to our site: http://alzheimers.findoutnow.org
