Alzheimer's Attitudes

I have heard many people say that, with Alzheimer’s, the patient becomes angry and aggressive as the disease progresses. I have to say, from my experience with my mother, that is not always the case. My mother has always been a loving person. She has always encouraged me to approach things from a positive perspective instead of taking a negative approach. When she was working in the business world she was a professional, pragmatic business woman. But beneath that lived the tender heart of a loving woman. I recall the time, when one of her tenants was behind on their rent, that she went to the house to post a pay rent or vacate notice. At that time she spoke with the tenant and found out that their child was in the hospital with cancer and they simply didn't have the money to pay the rent. Not only did she waive the rent for that month, and couple more for good measure, but she went out and bought groceries for the rest of the family and took it back by their house.

Now, with Alzheimer's very clearly in an advanced stage and advancing relentlessly every day, she is not angry. She is not aggressive. She may occasionally be a bit stubborn if she isn’t ready to get up or if she doesn’t want to change out of her warm pajamas, but she isn’t angry. She is, in fact, quite joyful, and happy and even silly on occasion. She makes jokes, in so far as she is able to do so, and always tells those around her how lovely their eyes are or that she thinks they are beautiful or handsome. She is a consummate hostess, greeting any visitors with a smile and a kiss on the hand. Nowhere is there a trace of the anger or the aggressive behavior that is so often associated with the disease.

Perhaps it’s because she is in her own familiar world, or maybe it’s because she knew what was coming and made arrangements in advance so that she could move into this phase of life with a peaceful mind. It could be any number of such things, I guess, but what I believe it must really be is that with Alzheimer’s you are stripped of all the pretenses, the professional fronts, the sophisticated manners and what you are left with is who you really are, the essence of the individual’s nature. In my mother’s case that is a joyful and loving woman with a natural instinct for caring and a positive approach to life. In other words, even in the face of this disease, she is a blessing to those around her.

Pills by the Spoonful

Lately mom's sugar has been a bit low because she's in the sleepy season and isn't eating as much. Interestingly, if you put a teaspoon or two of corn starch in apple sauce (or our favorite, peach mango sauce, or even fruit slices) it helps to keep the blood sugar up for a longer period of time. I guess it's slow to break down in the system. So... since she's been too drowsy to really eat much these past few days, I've been giving her the applesauce and corn starch as part of her meal.

We clean and save the used applesauce containers, as they are individual sized servings, and use them for her pills. We put them in the little cup and set it on her dinner tray so that she will eat them with or following her meal and, hopefully, avoid upsetting her stomach.

The past few days Mom has eaten her applesauce, then picked up her pill cup, which looks just like her applesauce cup, and used her spoon to scoop out the pills. Fortunately, the spoon has been still covered with some apple sauce so the pills have actually stuck to the spoon pretty well.

Mom has never eaten her pills with a spoon before, so this is new behavior. In the mornings she has not had applesauce with her meal, so she picks the pills out of the cup with her fingers as she has always done. I find it interesting that her brain is connecting the cups together and so leading her to use a spoon in the second cup as she has just done with the first cup. The brain is a curious thing.

Jingle Bells in My Dreams

Mom had fallen a couple of times trying to go to the bathroom at night by herself, so I have moved into her room and sleep in her bed with her at night. She doesn't move around at night; she climbs into bed, settles into place and doesn't twitch from that spot until she gets up for some reason.

Because she sleeps long periods at a stretch and doesn’t move while sleeping, we were worried that she might develop bed sores. To avoid that we bought her a memory foam bed that can be raised at the head and foot so that we can keep her moving and no one spot will bear the weight the same way for too long. Great!!!!

Except that, she was already Ninja silent when getting out of bed at night. I called her my Stealth Mommer. The only way I knew she was getting up was when I felt the bed moving. With the memory foam mattress, the bed doesn’t move. So I pinned jingle bells to the fringe of her side of the bedspread. Now, when she starts to get up, the bells go off and I can get to her before she gets up and falls.

Last night, I was exhausted, I was wracked out fast asleep. I was dreaming of old time airplanes at an air show…. I have no idea why, so don’t ask. As I watched, one of the plane’s engines started making a funny noise, like jingle bells… In a proper Pavlovian response, I jumped up in my dream and started running. As I woke to realize that the jingle bells were not JUST in my dreams, I was already out of bed and half way around it. It actually took me a moment to re-orient myself to the dark bedroom from the open air show I had been in a few seconds before. But I was moving without being awake. 

I am a soldier’s daughter. I grew up on tales or heroes who, when the tumult arises, advance to the sound of danger! I find it somewhat disturbing that, when the tumult arises, I advance to the sound of jingle bells.

 

Yeah….

Seasonal Adjustments

As we move into the dark half of the year mom becomes more somnolent and immobile. The grey cold days seem to get into her bones and into her attitude. She likes to just snuggle down and snooze.  I’ve found that some days she will sleep almost all day. On those days it’s hard to get enough food and drink into her to be safe. On the upside, she usually is wide awake the next day and fully engaged with what’s going on around her.

Today was such a day and we enjoyed movies and three full meals and some delightful chitty chat. That makes it a good day.

The Beginning

Let’s start with a little back ground…

My Mother was born in Marshall, Texas in 1930. She was active and engaged in High School and went on to achieve a degree in Journalism from Texas Christian Women’s University. She married my father the day he graduated from West Point and they set out together to build a life and multiple careers in a variety of challenging fields and times. She was a brilliant business woman, an educator and a strong and loving wife and mother.

When her father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, she and all of her siblings realized that they too had a chance of developing the disease. When her memory starting giving her problems, my mother joined a study program for a new drug designed to treat Alzheimer’s. She went through many intricate, and sometimes painful, procedures in order to participate. I asked her once why she was willing to go through such things as a spinal tap just to help them study a drug that might or might not help her. She told me that if she went through all of that, then maybe it would mean that her kids or grandkids never had to face the burdens Alzheimer’s.

That’s my mom.

Every year, faithfully, since she finished the study program and the drug was released for public use, she has gone back to the VA Hospital in Seattle to do the follow on question and answer sessions, the comprehension tests and the memory analysis. This year, for the first time, I think she will simply not be able to make the run up to Seattle for the tests.

As I move through this blog I will be trying to make regular posts on day to day changes, the ups and downs. I’ll also try to fill you in on the background story. Who my mother was, who she is now and the steps, large and small, that have brought us to this point on the Alzheimer’s Path.