Stage 6 Alzheimer's

It's a good thing Grandma is confined to a wheelchair, because if she were on foot she would definitely get lost in a matter of minutes. Every time I go to visit her you never know where you are going to find her... in someone else's room, out in the main dining area or stuck in a corner. I am amazed at how well she maneuvers in that thing.

Her swallowing is impaired. It makes me wonder if she is in the last stage officially. I worry all the time about her inability to eat. When she's really hungry she will feed herself, but it's hard for her to swallow. She can't remember how.

The nurses dress her in the morning so she doesn't have to worry about what to wear (not that she does).

This is Alzheimer's everyday. There comes a point in time when you stop thinking that you can hang in there until she forgets you, then it won't bother you so much when she does because you'll still have the memories. I was just thinking the other day I wanted to talk to her about stray cats because there's one around my office that I want to bring home, but am hesitant because the cat is pregnant, and I have no idea what happens with a pregnant cat and how cats have babies (like do they do it on their own? do I need to help? what?)... but Grandma would know because there were a ton of wild cats on the farm that she fed everyday.

A lot of times I just want to tell her things and have her understand.

Eat and Sleep

This week Grandma's main motivation has been eating and sleeping. She puts her head down when she's tired (whether it be the table or just plain leaning across her wheelchair at a wierd angle) and when she starts getting hungry that's all she wants to talk about.

Today we read the paper and flipped through a couple of magazines before she started telling me "Well let's go," and "How about we go to the table?" She says things like that when she's hungry, although she doesn't come right out and say she's hungry. You can't get her mind off of it once she's started. I finally gave up and wheeled her into the dining area at 4:30 just to get her quiet. She seemed content then.

Once we got in the dining room Mabel started up with "I'm tired!" To know Mabel is to know that she yells out anything she says, and once she starts up with "I'm tired!" then you get to hear it about a thousand more times through the course of dinner.

My mom is returning from Europe later today, so I'm sure in some way Grandma will be glad to see her. Whenever I show up I get a sense of "gladness" even though she doesn't smile or say so. It's in her eyes. She likes being called Mom, or Grandma, maybe because it gives her a sense of her self that she forgot long ago.

Alzheimer's: In the Span of a Year

I was looking through old photos and ran across some of Grandma when she lived at Liberty Village in 2003. She had only been off the farm a short time, and I remember that she was really having problems keeping track of things (meds, time, meals, etc.) and that we were worried that she would do something like over cook food or set something on fire. We had a party for her in August (pictured with her great-grandchildren: Scotty, Austin, David and the triplets Erin, Grant and Kira).

A few months later she was moved from her apartment in Liberty Village to a room in another section of the facility with no kitchen and basically a bed, entertainment center and living room area. It wasn't long after that move that she kept falling out of bed and losing her direction in the hallway. The decision was made to move her to Hillcrest in 2004 so that she would have round-the-clock care by nurses and aides. Later in 2004 the family decided to have Thanksgiving at Hillcrest so we could be with Grandma (pictured with my family Ethan, Scotty, Chad and Tom top and then me, Grandma and my mom). The change she went through in that year's time is cruelly obvious, and it seemed like I couldn't keep up enough with learning more about the disease and then getting used to her personality (or lack thereof) and the idea that THIS is how she would be from then on.

Pureed Food

I'm not sure if I can get used to all of this pureed and ground up food. They even liquify her pie so Grandma doesn't have to chew. But she still goes through the chewing motion weeks later, and will still spit it out if she's done.

She loves her chocolate. I gave her a couple of pieces before it was time to eat because she wouldn't stop panting (does this when she's hungry) and as I was sitting on her bed she suddenly grasped the chocolate bin and I literally wrestled it away from her. She growled at me after I got it away from her and for some reason I growled back and the all of the sudden she looked me in dead in the eye and just glared at me for a second and then put her hands up to her forehead and rested them there. I felt bad so I gave her another piece of chocolate. It didn't ruin her lunch totally... she ate a few bites of meat, half of her potatoes and whatever the green stuff was, peas or green beans. Aunt Carol seemed to think they were beans.

Grandma and I had a good time reading the newspaper. She likes to look at the ads and the funnies. I tried to tell her a few jokes, but I got that same deadpan look I got earlier so I asked her if I was funny and she said NO!

Fast and Fleeting Moments

There's a woman, Jeanette, at Hillcrest who comes out to eat at the lounge area table when I'm there with Grandma at mealtime. She smiles, makes eye contact and initiates conversations very well, but as soon as the words are out of her mouth, she forgets what she was talking about or can't recall the thought in her head.

I can tell the neurons aren't connecting. I know she sees what she believes she sees, even if it's supposed to be her mother sitting right next to me... when the chair is empty. Once she told me she feels bad that she had left her mother alone for a second and her mother had some sort of accident and lost the eyesight in one of her eyes. She may have gotten poked or hit something, I couldn't tell and when I asked her the moment was gone and she forgot what she was talking about.

Is time really that hard to get a hold of? She doesn't seem to be upset that she lost her thought, because I guess if she can't hang on to it, and doesn't remember it was there, what should she get upset about? I really try to keep up with the "conversation," although sometimes a string of generalities comes out like "well it wasn't supposed to be done that way and I wanted it to be more definite...."

The thing that upsets me is that she doesn't eat. She sees the food in front of her, she sees the tableware, and looks like it came from Mars. She can't equate the fact that the food in front of her is a clue that she is supposed to eat. Yesterday she sat there with her fingers in her pie like she was getting a manicure. I picked up her fork and put a piece of roast beef in her mouth and she said "Where did that come from?"