Holy crap! My grandmother . . . (Alzheimer's & dementia)

[bertha katzenengel]

My sisters send me "Grandma Visit Updates." Grandma is in a secure facility for Alzheimer's/dementia sufferers. She's 89 years old. She doesn't recognize anyone but knows only, "oh, you're here for me!" (to visit her). She doesn't have her words anymore; she'll point at an object and call it a "slick," that sort of thing.

Note: my Grandma had a chihuahua about 30 years ago whom she called Little Bit.

In the latest Grandma Visit Update, my sister writes:

"after a while, she asked if i have babies. i said, "no... do you?" and she said, after a slightly extended silence, "roger lee... roger lee". wow. i was impressed! i said, yeah, he's your baby! and she said, well, he was but i don't know anymore."

and

"after a while, some people with 2 little rat dogs were walking in from the gate. one was some tiny piece of fluff with no discernible face, and the other was a short-haired chihuahua that looked like the one grandma used to have. we talked for a minute about those cute little dogs, and then she said "come, little bit!". i was FLOORED. totally."

I am floored too! Wow!

[YellowRubberDuckie]

1. A lot of people with those problems have moments of clarity.

It's really cool for your grandma. I know it's hard, because I watched two of my grandmothers get eaten up by dimentia. They did have their moments of clarity, but they didn't last. I miss them both now. I miss their wisdom, but fortunately they aren't suffering anymore. They've long since passed. I know how tough it was to watch them slip away. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy. I'm sorry you're having to deal with this now. :hug:
Duckie

[bertha katzenengel]

8. thank you, Duckie

although our correspondence here is rare, :yourock: my world. :hug:

[mwdem]

2. That is so cool!

My grandma was the same way, and she had a little chihuahua-mix. We kept the dog and she would come to visit us on weekends from the "home". One day, she got pissed off at something (we never knew what), packed the dog in her bag and walked out of the house. We watched the whole procedure and stopped her, of course, but I will always remember that incident, and I was about 13 at the time.

[bertha katzenengel]

9. that happens frequently with Grandma

she gets extremely angry for reasons not clear to us. I'll bet that event made quite an impression on you at age 13.

[CrushTheDLC]

16. Anger is a normal part of it, at least from what I've seen.

One of my grandfathers passed away a few years ago from Alzheimers. He'd often become angry for no apparent reason. I always figured either the anger was internalized from having a brain that just wasn't working right. Or for that matter, it could just be a chemical reaction in the brain itself, as it often is with people who are depressed, and get angry. (been there and done that one myself)

Grandpa would seem to go back and forth in time, sometimes not seeming to recognize anybody, others recognizing those around him, but thinking it was decades ago, kind of like your grandmother did when she thought she knew the dog. What's even weirder is that he often had entire conversations with people who weren't there. Or at least, we couldn't see them.
It's tough to watch someone go through that, knowing that you can't do a damn thing to help them. It's enough to make me feel sorry for Nancy Reagan.

[xchrom]

3. i care for my 94 year old dad -- and have for over a year.

and my poor dad is moon-bat.

not alzheimers -- just demented.

he's always trying to get on the train -- we used to travel by train all the time when i was little.

he wakes up --''we better get going.'' -- ''get down to the station.''

he rememberd an old stetson hat yesterday{not the big cowboy things} -- i went and found it for him{he was convinced it was at the train station} he loved that.

[Lars39]

4. ~

:hug:

[xchrom]

5. thank you n/t

[Lisa]

6. my grandpa was like that too ...

He was obsessed with getting to the bank to check on his savings. It got so bad that he would try to sneak out of the house whenever my uncles or cousins weren't watching. Several times, the police would pick him up while he was walking along a busy highway, on the way to a bank which no longer existed because the branch had been vacated and demolished back in the 1970s.

[xchrom]

18. my dad can't walk --

his new thing is to try to get out of the chair to go to the train station.

scary and funny all at the same time.

[Lisa]

26. unfortunately my grandfather was quite mobile ...

He was strong as a horse (it was only his mind that was affected) -- he had worked as a logger in his youth. He was quite capable of shaking off people who tried to steer him from his intended course (except for my dad, who has a judo black belt).

Luckily he had always respected uniforms -- that much of his personality was intact -- and he would go along meekly if the police showed up to give him a ride back home.

[Love Bug]

21. I'll bet your grandpa lived through the Depression, didn't he?

My mother passed from Alzheimer's in 2002, so I'm familiar with these stories. She would hide stuff wrapped in kleenex. I remember the time (before nursing home) when we spent 2 hours searching for Mom's false teeth. After a couple of hours we notice she was wearing them. We have no idea where she put them but she did find them (thank god).

I heard a report on BBC Radio (bbc.co.uk/radio) about the special issues of dealing with Alzheimer's patients who also went through the Holocaust. Some of those poor folks are reliving those memories. The report said one of the biggest problems was getting the patients to take a shower. I can't even imagine....

[Lisa]

25. yes! And one elderly woman in our town used to hide her money

... in her panties. My mom was the district's public health nurse, and on home visits she would see that her patient had a clothesline strung across her bedroom. The woman was having incontinence problems, and she would periodically have to hang her money out to dry. Mom explained to me what it was like, to be afraid of bank failures (Canada very seldom has a financial institution collapse, thanks to the policy restructuring after the Depression).

You raise a really important point, Love Bug -- people who have experienced traumatic events frequently relive them in old age, if they have lost some of their faculties. On the block where I used to live, there was a Holocaust survivor who would sometimes slip past her children and go onto the street to beg for food and money. Her granddaughter caught up with her as she was holding onto my hand outside the supermarket, cajoling me to buy her a sandwich -- the girl, about my age, almost burst into tears as she explained that they had a comfortable home, but in some part of her grandmother's mind it was still 1940 in "the old country". I guess that was how she managed to survive, back then.

Last month I was in the hospital for tests, and there was an octogenerian in the bed next to me ... he was crying and whimpering as he re-lived being hospitalized as a soldier in WWII. It was horrific. The staff were trying to reassure him, but since he was in the advanced stages of dementia, they were unable to reach him. The poor man must have been going through hell, endlessly.

That night, I was unable to get to sleep, thinking about the people overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan now, who could well be experiencing the same nightmare in the year 2060!

[bettyellen]

7. wow

:hug:

they remember some odd old things, i know.

:hug:

[xchrom]

19. lol -- they sure do! -- and thank you. n/t

[bettyellen]

28. good god, my mom thought we were in the rockaways-

in an apartment that was made to be identical to her home no less. hey, she liked it there, so.....
and then she believed my dad divorced her and was living over by the botanical gardens. better than remembering he's long dead, i guessed. heck, she was even happy for him. how sweet is that?
:hug: so yeah, i know how it is.

[zanne]

22. Caregivers have to be able to laugh about some things.

I took care of my mother, who had Alzheimer's. It's such a cruel disease, but there were some moments that were just hilarious. We have a cat named Amos. My mother would open the back door and call out; "Anus! Anus!". She also decided once that the silverware belonged in the clothes hamper. I cleaned out the hamper, put in a shelf, and that's where we kept the silverware for about a year. She died in April. I miss her, but thinking about those things still makes me laugh.

[xchrom]

24. oh yeah -- you've been there.

they do dangerous things -- that just about sets you on fire -- and then they do the funniest damn things.

[reyd reid reed]

10. I took care of my grandmother for 6 years

and this sounds a lot like her. Three-fourths of the time she called me Florence (her sister), the other fourth, she called me Marilyn (my mother). She never could figure out who my son was.

And then, out of the blue, for an hour or so she'd be able to carry on a conversation in real time. Jerry Dunphy tended to bring the lucidity out in her.

She thought he was hot.

She never did lose her 'flirt'.

She died 16 years ago, when she was 91.

[bertha katzenengel]

12. My grandma's name is Florence

Hm :)

Jerry Dunphy -- hot?! Heh...

"From the desert, to the sea, to all of Southern California, a good evening." I will never forget that. Jeez... it's so ingrained in my brain, I ought have it put on my tombstone.



edited to post better picture

[hunter]

27. Jerry Dunphy... wow.

My dad would get home from work every day, open a beer, and turn on the news -- it was Jerry Dunphy when he was on CBS. Later, as a young man, I was introduced to Dunphy, and weirdly the only thing I could think was "This is very very strange, I'm taller than he is." As a kid he was always this huge figure of authority to me.

None of my grandparents had Alzheimer's, but they did suffer various forms of dementia towards the end. When one of my grandmothers was dying of cancer (and maybe I've never told anyone this) the pain drugs and the mets made her think I was her father. Everyone in our family had wonderful visits with her but me. It was always an ordeal of "Daddy, remember when..." and I couldn't, I hardly knew anything about her childhood, and I felt like such a failure because I couldn't make her happy, and she'd just get more and more agitated until I had to leave.

[DeposeTheBoyKing]

11. That is really nice

Those moments of clarity will be cherished.

[bertha katzenengel]

13. they certainly will

:hi:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

14. My stepfather has dementia

and sometimes when we go visit him, he's completely off in fantasy land, but when I was telling him about my then-upcoming trip to England a few weeks ago, he remembered having gone to several of the places that I mentioned and was telling me about them.

People with dementia fade in and out like radio stations in bad weather.

[texas1928]

15. They say the most recent memories go first.

My grandmother could regonize pictures of my dad, and I from when we were little but, looking at us now she was not sure.

She would talk about dogs she had as pets when she was a little girl.

[radwriter0555]

17. Yes, the short term memory goes, but they can talk about the past like it

is happening right now.

[Random_Australian]

20. Reminds me of my grandpa - slowly walking along with heavy use

of his walking stick (stroke you see - little kinasthetic or any other sense in his left side), trying to tell tales of when he was younger, going ok at it (still very entertaining) and he got on the subject of some road built by the military, which of course reminded him of an incredibly long march along some road in WWII, and he suddenly says..... "y'know, I have not thought about that in years.... hmmm, how did that marching music go?"

Ta-daaa! As soon as he started singing the music, his arms and legs suddenly became co-ordinated and he marched on and away!

An awesome sight to see. Suprising what brains can hold in places unexpected.

[ScreamingMeemie]

23. Through all of the suffering, those are the little gifts you get.

Moments of clear thought. My grandmother (great grandma actually) suffered from dementia. We went to visit her with my Aunt and my Uncle, MrG and I. We were sitting talking with her and she was talking about how we were all going out for the day. My aunt kept saying,"No Grandma, Betty (her daughter, my great aunt) is taking you out..." Grandma appeared to be getting more and more confused, and my aunt finally said, in the loud, slow voice usually reserved for the very old or for speakers of another language,"No...Grandma...My...Name...Is...Joyce..." To which grandma replied, rather huffily,"I Believe I Have Made Your acquaintance!" and turne to look at me while rolling her eyes. Now that both my grandma and my aunt (too young) are gone, that memory is something that never ceases to make me smile. :hi: