Coping with Dementia when it Hits Close to Home

In 1995 we began to receive frantic emergency calls from my husband's mother. She said that my father-in-law had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's and would be dead by the end of the year. When we left Hawaii in 1980 my husband and his father didn't separate on good terms.

We had a lot of things going on, such as our son being still in public school, my being in school and my husband's full time job. But we realized that we needed to go see his father and to mend the breach, while we could.

We went and spent two wonderful weeks with the folks. Dad was sometimes a bit forgetful but nothing that noticeable. One day when my mother-in-law and I were talking, I suggested that she get a second opinion, that I didn't think he had Alzheimer's. She agreed to do so after we went home.

A little while after we returned home, Mom called and let me know that she had done as I had suggested. The new doctor told her that Dad didn't have Alzheimer's, that he was having small strokes which were causing him to lose mental connection. Due to the damage being done to his brain he thought that if some vitamin E and A were good that a lot more would be even better. He would have been dead by the end of the year due to oil based vitamin overdose.

Due to circumstances in our own lives, we weren't able to go back to see the folks until 2006. Our son was getting married that year so my husband couldn't take time off for both the wedding and to see his parents. So I went alone. I felt that we or at least I needed to go out every year to encourage Mom. Dad was getting difficult
and none of the family was in Hawaii anymore. She was coping with him by herself. She needed some adult time with someone whose mind was all there. I went for two weeks.

My staying there upset Dad's schedule, although his schedule wasn't that settled in any case. He tended to sleep during the day and to prowl around the condo at night. I was sleeping in the living-room. He'd come into the living-room while I was on the computer and demand to know who I was and why I was there. After I went to bed, he'd turn on the lights and come over and ask me who I was. It didn't matter, every night I'd turn the lights off and he'd turn them back on.

The condo had been equipped with rolling storm shutters outside the sliding glass doors on the lanai. Every late afternoon, Dad would go out and shut the shutters and the sliding doors tight on a condo without air conditioning. We had to negotiate with him to get the doors open, or just wait til he'd gone back to bed then we'd sneak them back open. At night he'd try to do the same with the bedroom windows but Mom would blackmail him with her not sleeping with him. He didn't like that so he'd leave them alone.

Mom had to deal with this all the time. I just had to just deal with it for two weeks during 2006, 2007 and 2008. He dealt with my presence better the next two years especially since my husband was able to go with me in 2007. Although, instead of prowling around my bed in the middle of the night, he'd wash dishes and dump the
garbage and try to put boxes away that we'd made the mistake of leaving out, with the lights on, of course.

The garbage shoot, outside the condo, was as far from the condo that Dad wanted to go. Mom was able to get Dad to a doctor about half the time that she needed to take him. The VA sent in home visit medical personnel, regularly, to monitor him. They also sent in attendants to watch Dad, giving Mom a break even to just take a nap or to go grocery shopping.

The last year I was there, one day, Mom made some comment about the time and Dad took it as a signal for the time to close the shutters and windows. It was around noon. Mom had to do something so I tried to tell Dad that he couldn't do them yet. I didn't do that again. He got very upset that I would tell him to do such a thing. It was one of the few time I saw that old man that he used to be as he tried to put me in my place. He may have forgotten a lot of things, but he'd not forgotten where I fit into the family.

Dad had his good days and his bad days. On the bad days, no one got any sleep and he wandered around in the middle of the night, slept during the day, didn't eat and didn't talk to anyone. On good days, he'd spend part of the day up with us, eat well and even talk to us. When he was able, he would talk to me, especially the last year. We actually had some sensible conversations.

In 2008, Mom decided, on the advice of her doctor to take Dad off of most of his medication since he was getting too difficult for her to medicate and the medication wasn't making any appreciable difference in his health. She also had hospice and meals-on-wheels coming in to help her. The last two years, the volcano was also erupting, which was causing Mom to be really sick. It made things very difficult for her to care for Dad.

Due to circumstances beyond their control, they had to leave their home two weeks before Christmas 2008 and move across the country to move in with Mom's sister. The flight across the country was very difficult for Mom because Dad was convinced that they weren't on a plane and he wanted to everyone to get out of his "home".
He kept hitting the seat in front of him trying to get the woman seated there to move. That was a very long flight. We were all really concerned about how Dad would take the move.

Mom told us that Dad moved right in and became more active than he'd been before. She said that he was enjoying his new home. In May 2009, he got sick and needed to be hospitalized. Because he was separated from Mom he gave up and died the end of that month. He was 85 years old. One of the few conversations he and I had back in Hawaii, he told me that he was still around because he felt that Mom still needed him, that the chores he did in the middle of the night were his helping her. He may have gotten a bit misdirected because his mind was misfiring. But his heart was still aimed in the right direction.