It's the Small Things

With Alzheimer’s the brain stops tracking the way it used to on such things as words, memories, and conversational control. It also impacts motor skills, too. Doing simple things like dressing, feeding yourself and basic hygiene becomes less and less manageable as the disease progresses. I may be wrong in my approach, but I always try to have my mom do as much as she can by herself; from pushing herself up out of her big chair to walking instead of being pushed in her wheel chair and even to performing her own ablutions. I can judge how tired she is, by how many of the small things she can do for herself.

As she has moved through this process we went from a woman able to select her own clothes, dress and put on make-up, to a woman who sits passively while she is washed, dressed in jammies, in which she almost exclusively lives now, and her hair is combed for her. She can still brush her teeth quite thoroughly, but she really has no concept any longer of personal hygiene.

She has gotten weaker, as time has passed. On good days she can walk, with the aid of her rolling walker, back and forth from her bed room to her bathroom or from her bedroom to the family room/ kitchen.  On most days, she can only walk part of the way before being exhausted, but walk she does so that she can keep up some of her strength.

I have noticed at night that she is just fine when she’s sitting and watching the TV, but when it’s time to get up she goes wobbly and seems shaken. Sometimes she even sags over on one side or the other. I’ve done the stroke tests, smile, raise your arms, repeat after me, and to all of them she responds perfectly. Worried that she might be having TIA’s, I asked the Dr with the Alzheimer’s study program about the incidents when she called for the annual review. She indicated that it is most likely a result of the disease. When tired, Alzheimer’s patients can have little glitches in their circuitry that looks like a mini stroke, but is just a weary brain that can’t find the direct pathway it needs to accomplish its task.

We keep trying to stay ahead of the big things related to this disease, but sometimes it’s the small things that seem so big.  Unless we handle them together, then nothing is too big for us.