Dementia: Deterioration of the Mind and the Family

It's interesting how dementia affects people; each person deals with it in his or her own way and whether or not that way is the right way is often seen as purely subjective; to me, how people deal with having a family member who has Alzheimer's is telling not only of their character, but of their moral standing. My own personal experience with dementia comes via my great-uncle, my father's uncle and it's focused on how the people in our family have chosen to deal with it. Experiences with dementia are not just about how a person loses his or her memories or becomes incapacitated and put into homes. The dynamics of the families of people suffering from dementia also suffer and that is exactly what happened to mine.

My great-uncle Bob was formally diagnosed with Alzheimer's several years ago, but most of us in the family were aware long before that time that his mind and general health were deteriorating in such a way that it broke our hearts to see it. He was having trouble recalling basic information, like the names of his two late wives or where he went to college. It was hard to see and still is hard to see to this day. Unfortunately, the majority of my extended family saw Uncle Bob's diagnosis as a means to getting access to his finances, as all of his siblings came slithering out of the woodwork wanting to gain control over his bank accounts while he was becoming more and more vulnerable.

Uncle Bob was always a gregarious and outgoing character, with a love for hunting in the outdoors and carrying on with friends and family. He loved a good scotch and a fine meal, but would whip up a batch of his deer chili for you to try, too. Every Christmas Eve was celebrated at Bob's house and the house would be bursting at the seams with family and friends coming to share the great food of our Hungarian ancestry and the rowdy games that we played. Uncle Bob was a lawyer by profession and he always took great pride that he fought in the Korean War as a fighter pilot and was always the first one to lend someone money if help was needed, which, it turned out, was a serious downfall for him after he was diagnosed. He lent and gave money to everyone, and not just small sums- he gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to individuals, namely his siblings and their families. He bought cars and houses, paid for bills, college tuitions and to bail certain family members out of jail. The only people who never asked or took money from him was my own direct family, which includes my father, Bob's nephew, my mother, me and my two siblings. We never had the need, the desire or the gumption to ask Uncle Bob for money because my father had seen to it that our family was always well provided for, period. We didn't want or need Uncle Bob's money; all we wanted from him were good stories and time spent together as a family.

My father considers his uncle to be his mentor and a secondary father figure, especially since he himself became a lawyer and the two of them practiced together for years before my father finally moved on and became a judge. Shortly after my Uncle Bob was diagnosed with the Alzheimer's, my father came to realize that Bob needed to have constant care and to have someone appointed as a conservator to his estate to handle all of the finances and the basic day-to-day living nuances of life. At first, my father thought that Bob's siblings were going to be willing and able to take on those specific tasks but he soon came to realize that all they were doing was bleeding Bob's bank accounts dry. One of my great aunt's was continually solicited by fake lottery commissions based overseas, asking her to send "good faith payments" in order to collect the millions that she had "won" from them. Well, all of those "good faith payments" came in the forms of five-thousand or ten-thousand or sometimes twenty-five thousand dollars and the person to pay for most of those was Bob- not her. My father even arranged to have the FBI come and talk to her and explain that it was illegal for Americans to play overseas lotteries and therefore anything that those people were telling her were lies; despite that visit from the FBI, she kept sending Bob's money to them in hopes that she would become a millionaire. The other two living siblings of my uncle (my father's mother, my grandmother, passed years ago and would have just about have had a heart attack if she knew what her siblings were up to) also took money from Bob in all kinds of forms. Bob's brother convinced Bob to buy him a house out of state and to buy him a car, while my other great aunt asked for money to go on trips to Europe or other foreign countries, all which was paid for with money that my uncle gave freely, thinking that he was just being generous and not knowing that he was being taken advantage of by his own blood.

After all of the money-grubbing came to light, my father took charge and filed a petition to the courts to appoint him as Bob's conservator. The hearings that were held to determine who would become conservator consisted of my great aunt's and other great uncle trying to defame my father as they stated that my father had taken money from Bob and done numerous other things that would not allow him to be the best choice for the conservator. Funny how Bob may have been losing his memory as his instincts as a lawyer proved that in fact all of them were the ones stealing from him. Bob kept receipts and paperwork on everything, all which my father used to show the court just how much Bob's siblings had taken from him and continued to take. In the end, my father was appointed conservator and since then has seen to it that his uncle is taken care of in the best way possible.

While many people would have preferred to sell the house of the person suffering from dementia and stick him or her in an assisted-living facility, my father hired live-in caretakers who specialize in dementia patients and went about updating Bob's house to fit Bob's needs. Bob's siblings were furious that the house was not going to be sold, as the asking price for that house would be a small fortune but my father refused to put his uncle in a home of any kind. My father is one of those people who dig's into a project or a cause like a pit bull- he won't let go until he is satisfied that the best has been done. Uncle Bob is taken to the best doctors, has the best care, always has special meals prepared for him and is never forgotten and my father sees to all of that. We, meaning my own direct family, are sure as the sun is bright that the care that my father has provided for Bob is the reason that the Alzheimer's has yet to claim his mind completely and keeps Bob happy. My father or some member of my family are over at Bob's house at least a few times a week and we are all in constant contact with him and the people who take care of him, while the rest of Bob's family have forgotten him and don't call, write or visit him at all. What my family and I cannot fathom is how these people sleep at night; how can they believe that they are automatically entitled to their brother's money and property? These people are of our blood and we all used to be a family but that part of our lives has come and gone and their true natures have been discovered. Oh, we still hear from them from time to time when they have something to complain about or we hear from our lawyer that one of them have filed some complaint questioning the conservatorship but none of that matters to us. What matters to my family and I is that our uncle is happy and taken care of, as best as can be done, because he has a disease that is never going to go away or get better. As hard as it is to see the clouds come in and blank out some of Bob's memory, we know that he is still in there somewhere- he's just out of our reach, that's all, but he's still here with us.