[cbloom]

My grandpa got it about 5 years ago and degenerated over 2-3 years. Fortunately my grandma was still alive and suffered through helping him and watching him go away day by day. They also hired a nurse to come in every day because my grandpa was a big man and needed to be physically hauled around and put in the shower and things like that which my grandma couldn't do.

[ QUOTE ]

She is basically screaming bloody murder the whole way and is attempting to make everyone in our family feel guilty about it.


[/ QUOTE ]

This is one of the things that's so hard about it, on a surface level they don't even realize they have it and think that you're just being rotten to them for no reason. Deep down I think they know, but day to day if you try to take away their freedom they'll fight.

A kind of funny positive thing happened with my grandpa at first. In his later years he had become a sour old man who was in an unhappy marriage his whole life and would just make horrible biting comments and was just awful to be around. When the Alzheimers was in its early stage, he sort of regressed to an earlier point in his life, he started talking a lot about his days in the Navy in WW2 which was stuff he had never shared with us before. He was still totally coherent and functional, he just sort of went into his past, and he was way happier and more like the way I remember him from when I was young, making jokes and playing cards and stuff.

Then the angry/violent phase comes and you just pray it ends quick. I feel kind of guilty about it, but once they're past a certain point there's not much good in visiting them any more.