"Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can't be certain." So begins Albert Camus' novella The Stranger, and so begins the story of my own mother. The nursing home called Dad overnight to tell him Mom had suffered a heart attack, but we weren't able to make it to the hospital in time.

In many ways, Mom was well on the way to dying: she had had a series of TIAs (transient ischemic attacks, or mini-strokes), and was diagnosed with ALzheimer's disease in the spring of 2008. I've been living with Dad to help take care of Mom for several years now, woefully underemployed, but that's another story.

Mom continued to suffer TIAs on an irregular basis, each one corresponding with a steeper bump in her slow decline to senile dementia. Mom wasn't doing particularly well having been diagnosed six years earlier, but still well enough for Dad and I to take care of her, until a week or so before Thanksgiving, when she suffered another TIA. She took an alarming turn for the worse, asking questions like, "Are we home yet?" and "When are we going home?" This although we were in the same house she'd been living in for 40 years.

Mom's temper was also getting increasingly violent. She'd always been ill-temmpered, but Mom was getting to the point where I began to go to night asking myself how I was going to keep my cool if I had to make the inevitable call to the 911 dispatcher to tell tham that Mom had tried to hit Dad over the head with her cane and Dad needed medical help. Thankfully, that never happened. I also had to beg off of going going over to my sister's for Thanksgiving with the rest of the family -- not just Mom, Dad, and me, but also my other sister flying in from Dallas. Dad had the brilliant idea of spending two nights at my sister's. We had all been there one night in June for my parents' 50th wedding anniversary, and that was tough enough. Mom was ill-tenpered about the sofa bed not being comfortable enough, and I being in a strange bed got maybe two hours of sleep. I haven't been getting enough sleep in my own bed dealing with Mom, and as awful as I felt for saying no to the rest of the family, being cooped up in a house with no opportunity to get out for 48 hours was too much.

And then the third week of January, mom suffered one more TIA. I figured that this was finally going to be the TIA that sent her to a nursing home, but amazingly, the hospital discharged her the next morning, despite my sister (who had medical proxy if anthing happened to Dad) insisting we couldn't take care of Mom any longer. In some ways I didn't care either way, but you try to get my mother into a nursing home. She had another of her screaming fits, and I finally blew my stack and said that if Mom did anything to made Dad have to go to hospital, it's technically assault and battery, and it's either a crime for which she'd go to jail, or for which she'd be declared non compos mentis. There was no way I could have taken care of her myself. Not that Mom understood any of this, of course; it just made her scream louder. Go ahead and tell me I'm evil, but I really didn't give a shiit. Hell, I was living in abject terror any time my dad had an early-morning doctor's appointment and left me alone with her for an hour or two. If she heard him go out, she'd go to the door and bang on it, screaming that Dad was leaving her. Anyhow, she went to the hospital for "tests", and from there to the nursing home. Going to the nursing home was a thoroughly depressing experience. Never mind the people who were much further along the course of Alzheimer's than Mom and were practically catatonic; Mom would get furious when the time came to leave since of course we weren't taking her home with us. Going just before lunch turned out to be the best strategy: when the staff took all the patients to lunch, we could make our getaway.

I hope none of you ever have to deal with a loved one with Alzheimer's. Believe me, it's hell. There's a lot of details about the "joys" of dealing with someone suffering from senile dementia that I haven't included, but the post is too long anyway.

I'm very sorry to hear about your loss, even if life leading up to it was being immensely difficult.

I've had two grandparents with alzheimer's (one dead, one not yet but probably in the next couple of years), and it's ... interesting indeed, particularly if they still have spouses that they are making life hard for.

I'm also very sorry to read about your loss and about the extremely difficult period you endured. You shall be in my prayers tonight.

Love,

Tami

_________________
Learn the "tea-stealing" tesuji! Cho Chikun demonstrates here:

I'm very sorry for your loss.

I’m sorry for you, and thanks for sharing with us.

_________________
“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

Please accept my condolences, both for your loss and for you and your family's long ordeal. Be well.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Hi Fedya, my condolences.

It's so horrible to deal with the gradual destruction of a loved one's mind. Whenever I read about it, I just feel very fortunate that dementia stopped bothering my family after it took my great-grandmother. All those decisions are hard and painful, no matter if they tell you those were the right decisions.

I can't do much more than say, I understand how hard it is when someone you love goes insane. You want to keep loving them and supporting them, and they just want to attack you for being disobedient or confusing, with all means they can still remember to use. I can't think of anything more difficult to deal with, or anything I want to see again any less.

Sorry that this happened to you, Fedya. I went through some of the same, but only for a few days. I can't imagine how you could do it for years.



My wife had to go through the same thing with her mother. ( We met 2 days before her mother finally died. ) She faced constant screaming accusations of betrayal and abandonment, despite the fact that she got her mother into one of the finest nursing homes in LA.

_________________
Help make L19 more organized. Make an index: https://lifein19x19.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=5207

Thanks for sharing. I know from experience how difficult it can be to deal with people suffering from Alzheimer's, but luckily they weren't people from my family. That would surely be infinitely harder. Condolences.

_________________
Patience, grasshopper.

something strikes me, is that you opens with the stranger by Camus.

Maybe i am reading too much in that, but fedyia, being mad at your sick mother does NOT make you like the protagonist of the novel, this does not make you heartless, or evil. In theory, we should have an infinite patience for the one we love. Those who believe that did not go through what you did.

I know from personal experience when someone dies and the last memories are bitter, its awful because you can take nothing back, and i also know thqt you can feel guilty at feeling relieved that all is over.

You stayed living with your parents, a lot of people would not have done that. It was hopeless, you did it anyway. You could not have done more. Everybody would have feel rage.

When my father went to the hospital in France I was working in the US with my family, the doctors told us he would probably never wake up but they had no idea if it would last 2 days, 2 weeks, 2 months... i could not go there for a long time because of work, and not twice, so i had to wait till it was over to go to the funeral. So i understand the sense of having missed the last moment, but i keep saying to myself that he was already gone in some way anyway.

And like your mother, he was definitely in a better place.

no idea why i shared that, just don't let guilt an regrets crush you

_________________
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.