Dazed…..and Confused
When kids are young, it seems the conversation is always about schools and sports. On the flip side, when a loved one has dementia, the conversation is still singular. But now it’s about when to use drugs.
At other times in my life, when seeing the elderly appearing zoned out, it was easy to judge. Like most judgements, for me it was based on no life experience whatsoever. I had no clue what it would be like to watch someone agitated to the max by unseen demons, unable to reassure or distract, helpless to offer any aid.
As her disease progresses, my mother lives in a world inside her head, filled with terror and questions. She tells me of walking up and down the freeways at night, of fires in the next room, of people stealing all her money. She cannot be dissuaded.
For a while now, I have left the facility after spending time with her, literally (yes, I actually mean “literally”) zapped of every particle of energy I was clinging to. Trying to follow the conversation, to reason and then sympathize is the most exhausting thing I have ever experienced.
Her caretakers remark on her agitation. Mom salts her own food and then decides to salt everyone’s at the table — except that they are all on salt-free diets. So all that food needs to be tossed, new food served and then everyone complains because they want that salty food. Mom decides she doesn’t need her walker and proceeds to tell her main caretaker (who is an angel) that she is not Mom’s boss and to be quiet! She thinks she is moving and stacks all her possessions on her bed, ready for boxes that are not coming.
So time for a new plan. The doctor agrees and her Xanax is increased. She is now quieter and less combative but also less Mom. Maybe I need to realize that the Mom I know is continuously disappearing. Maybe the best I can do is make this stage a bit easier and if some fogginess ensues, so be it.
To quote the sage Tony on NCIS “Put down the gavel, take off the robe, Time to stop being the judge”. Got it.
And now, I plan to just relish the calm, however it arrives.
