Dementia, a Family Affair

Conversation with a Dementia patient can be maddening to the most placid individual. For most people it can be difficult to know how to respond when a close family member begins to forget bits of conversation, or worse that you are even related. Having experienced two family members with dementia I have some important survival experience.

With my great-uncle, it's hard to even remember his descent into Alzheimer's. As his memory faded he would straighten the rug in front of their hearth at every passing. With my grandmother, humor, love and empathy helped keep my family together.

Of course, if you had a family like mine; it's not so hard to experience the humor. We are always doing something crazy and we love to pass on those wild tales that seem to only grow more humorous with each yearly retelling.

For example, my grandmother, when placed in an assisted living facility for people with Alzheimer's, never gave up her attempts to return home. Eventually she managed to make good on her intent by braining a nurse with her telephone receiver so that she could escape the building. Luckily she was returned by police before she made it too far down I-40. Having been one of the first women to work for the weather bureau, she never seemed to lack for courage.

Her assault earned a one way ticket to the top floor, which was also the maximum security level. To leave, you had to enter a numeric code to get the elevator doors to open. This was a task I often found daunting, not a surprise considering how long it took me to memorize my own home phone number. The other disconcerting facet was the way some residents would hover near the elevator doors like cats... just waiting for the right moment.

When it became evident that she was contained my grandmother decided that any new escape attempts would require funding, so she went door to door with her suitemate (partner in crime) selling matches. As my mother recounted the tale to me by phone I immediately blurted out, "How did she get matches?" Luckily the matches were only imaginary. Sort of like the story of the Emperor's new clothes. However, when they were caught out by the staff, the money collected could not be returned because no one could remember who donated or for how much.

My grandmother's condition could have been Alzheimer's, but her doctors seemed to believe that what she really had was Dementia caused by numerous mini strokes. Because her hearing was so poor, and she hated to wear a hearing aid we believed it to be the cause of her confusion in conversation. My mother is the one who bore bulk of the emotional and physical cost. I was just an auxiliary member of the support team. But we still relive the life of my grandmother through celebratory stories of ALL her life experience. Even toward the end of her life we could often find her at the piano, a skill she never lost, playing hymns from memory - with a lot of repeats.