I dropped in to visit mum yesterday afternoon.
I was in for several surprises. Mum was sitting in a wheel chair, wearing a
night-dress, and sitting next to her was Rachel.
The wheel chair caused me some concerns. The background to this is that since
her series of falls mum appears to have lost the confidence to stand or walk
unaided. The staff cannot be there to take an arm each side every time mum
needs to walk, and in any event, mum tends to try to slump down anyway, and
make herself a dead weight. the wheel chair is the only viable option now for
moving mum. Mum also seemed to lose interest in food. The staff are confident
that they can get her appetite back, but they are pessimistic about her walking
again. The physiotherapist has been a regular visitor, but walking also depends
on the will and the memory of how to do it - and mum seems to have neither now.
This augurs badly. Once mobility is lost, muscles atrophy that much faster,
fluid collects where it should not, and the circulation suffers. All these
factors add up to a kind of attrition against the body - a process that we saw
eating into dad increibly quickly. And the end is inevitable. Neither Rachel
nor Greg think mum will last another year, and I have to agree with them.
Rachel had been successful in encouraging mum to drink orange juice. She can
still lift a cup to her mouth and knows how to regulate her own drinking. The
only weakness is that she sometimes seems to become distracted and forget that
she is holding the cup, and it will start to tip.
On the positive side of the balance, I noted that the bruising on mum's face
has reduced markedly. She still looks bad, with her missing teeth, blearly
eyes, wild hair and deep wrinkles, but a lot better than she had done a few
days ago.
Oddly, none of us seemed that upset about mum's condition. I don't know if it
is because this is coming so soon after dad's death, and we area all a bit numb
still, or whether we have just seen so much and recognise the inexorable
quality of these slow descents.
We did talk a bit about dad at dinner later, the three of us. I mentioned that
I keep having the thought, 'my dad's dead', but that it seems to have no
content, to be no more meaningful than saying 'a equals b'. Rachel says she has
been experiencing the same thing. Earlier this week I told one other friend
about dad's death, and we discussed this point. He's also suffered a
bereavement and says that he has thought the same thought every day since, with
the same emotional detachment.
Maybe mum's passing will be over before we know it, at this rate. It's an odd
thought. I always thought we would all be more affected by losing her than
losing dad. It may still prove to be so.
Description
What happens to a family when both parents are diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease?
This weblog chronicles the experiences of one such family in Sydney, Australia.