Incoherence and Alzheimer's

Watching and listening to a mind disintegrate from the inside out is
not very encouraging or contemplative.

Listening to the descent into babble and apparent hallucinations is
hard. Realizing there is very little, really nothing, that can be
done is not easy. Knowing that there is minimal pain is some comfort
but not really comfort at all since the we selfishly feel sorry for
our selves and our own feelings of helplessness.

Mom is sometimes incoherent and often unable to communicate what is
momentarily on her mind. She seems to see people not there, she is
distressed by the people she can not see yet she is certain are in
her home, in her life and, on some level, distressing her. The
incoherence and babbling appears to come from her inability to
articulate what she is seeing, feeling in her mind in that instant.

As I listened on the phone to her tonight and tried to lead her with
questions that might help her string some thoughts together ( I was
no help) she gradually quieted down over about ten minutes until she
was through speaking and wanted to give the phone to Dad.

Mom has not normally ( I should smile and change that line) had a
very strong "sundowner syndrome" with more evening agitation then
during the rest of the day. Possibly this is what is coming on now. I
of course, do not know.

Dad is continuing with the day care centers two days a week for four
hours each day and he has had the first visit from a lady who helps
with in home care and will be bathing Mom once a week.

Things are changing.

I choose to Live

I have spent the past several weeks observing the changes in Dad's
attitudes as he has come to grips with the current phase of Mom's
Alzheimer's disease.

Dad had recently used the word "depressed" for the first time in
referring to himself. He is naturally struggling with the energy
issues and frustrations and depression that plagues the spouse of an
Alzheimer's patient. He has never before in life considered
depression a part of HIS life and he has struggled within himself to
acknowledge that the changes taking place in Mom were truly tearing
him down also.

But this is not the change I refer to....

Dad has come to accept on a new level that Mom's fading away is
reality. Naturally he has known there is little he can do to change
the course of the disease yet he is only now more fully accepting the
changes that have arrived and are yet to come.

Dad signed Mom up for twice weekly half day "memory loss day care" at
a local church. Tuesday and Thursday Mom spends four hours with other
patients and spouses and parents and children with memory loss
issues. The volunteer assistants are wonderful and loving and kind to
Mom and also are responsive to the fears and concerns that Dad has as
well.

This was a huge step for Dad to take and he called me on the first
day feeling very emotional that this was the "first step" of many
steps yet to come. And all steps will be downward.

But that is only part of the change I refer to...

Dad has taken up a new hobby. Dad has apparently declared to himself
that he chooses to live. He has begun to again search for pleasure in
things that he wants to do rather being completely consumed with the
thought and care for Mom, that if not left unbalanced would sap him
to death as well. He is jumping into finishing his greenhouse system,
installing drip irrigation for his tomatoes and roses and tending to
plants in the hothouse that will be set out later in the Spring. He
is working with life and excited about something again. He is more
full of life on the phone with details of his hobbies and questions
for me to look up on the internet.

Dad chooses to live. Praise God.