The first step may be to learn that Alzheimer’s is just one of many
forms of Dementia which is why it is using the two word phrase can be helpful.
“Most people
separate the diseases,” stated Teresa McDaniel who specialized in care of the
elderly for the last 20 of her 35 year career as a nurse.
“Dementia is
the broad medical term and Alzheimer’s is the worst form,” clarified McDaniel.
Pruitt Health
Administrator Linda Reece agreed the more you learn the more confusing it gets,
“because it’s progressive and there’s so many different types of dementia.”
Vascular
Dementia, Frontotemporal Dementia and Lewy Body Dementia have unique attributes
because they affect specific areas of the brain.
“With some
types of dementia like the Lewy Body they’re much more aggressive. They’re much
more agitated. They fall, “described Reece, “but Alzheimer’s just gradually
eats away until there’s nothing left of that individual.”
“Alzheimer’s
eats away at the brain a little bit every day,” continued Reece, “Our brain is
what controls us. Up in our brain is stored all of our memories of our past
life. With Alzheimer’s it just eats away until there’s only the shell of a
person. It can be a slow agonizing death.”
Some of the
agony comes in knowing there is something wrong but being unable to understand
what it is.
Ruth Evans
was a Hugh Chatham nurse as the hospital system was just preparing for long
term care.
“I was nurse
manager when we set that unit up until they moved it out into the new nursing
home,” claimed Evans.
“At that time
there were several freestanding long term care units but not that many in the
hospital,” remembered Evans. “We wanted to be able to keep the patients, take
care of them and not try to have to send them outside. When we open the new
nursing home it helped because we still could keep them in the community.”
Evans
recalled some of her patients as they experienced the process of Alzheimer’s.
“Once I had a
gentleman that had no family to take care of him but he needed [help]. There
was something wrong he just didn’t know what.”
Evans
described the patient’s frustration at trying to talk but the words would come
out garbled. “Once he passed the stage of knowing he was doing something wrong
then he was happy. We became his family. In fact he even called us by some of
his family‘s names.”
Once the
disease progresses beyond where the person afflicted knows there is a problem
it is often the families who suffer the most.
“It’s very
hard for the families,” confirmed Reece, “I don’t care how much you know, that
first time that you walk into the room and they don’t know you is like a knife
goes through your heart but they can’t help it.”
That may be
part of why it seems part of human nature to hide the loss of memory even
though the brain is malfunctioning.
“I’ve had
husbands come in and say I knew my wife was sick but when her parents came she
hid it so they thought I was lying about her condition,” recalled Evans, “but
as soon as they left the driveway she’d say ‘who was that,’ so she wasn’t able
to recognize her family but she knew to hide her symptoms.”
This is the
worst thing that can be done since treatments can prolong the stages allowing
Alzheimer’s and other Dementia patients to enjoy their lives better longer.
Much of the
Alzheimer’s Dementia experience is heartbreaking, but hidden within the
seemingly endless sorrow are gems of hope.
“As the
disease progresses they become more and more remembering 30 to 40 years ago but
can’t remember what happened yesterday,” described Reece. “They still look for
their children but their children being little.”
“We had one
lady in particular who would roll up every evening at 3 o’clock because she was
waiting for her children to get off the school bus,” revealed Reece. “We just
learned that’s OK. That kept her calm. She would come up. The minute a child
would come through the door she would roll herself back down the hall.”
“She was
reliving another time, another place,” claimed Reece. “Her daughter said every
single day her mother waited for her to get off the school bus. Even as the
disease progressed she didn’t know her daughter because her daughter was little
but she knew she had to get her off the school bus.”
SOURCE: The
Tribune, Beanie Taylor
.
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