Dealing with aging family members - Alzheimers especially

[RiverFenix]

This is pretty personal post for me as three of my family members have all had the disease and my family has to deal with it again. My great grandmother was healthy as can be until she was ~92, she got the disease and passed away within a year. My grandmothers sister came down with the disease when she was a little over 50 and descended into absolute incoherent babbling within 6 months. She lived another few years but had an incredibly nasty temper and couldn't remember anything or hold any sort of conversation.

Currently my grandmother has been slipping for the last 2-3 years. Shes been pretty bad the last year and is at the point where she is completely absent minded. She forgets everything said in a conversation, forgets to pay bills, she lives by herself and at this point is incapable of doing so. Over the weekend she fell and broke her hip, cut her head open, and when my aunt came to visit her later that day she had no idea she had done any of that. We're currently getting her out of the hospital and finding a home for her to stay in. She is basically screaming bloody murder the whole way and is attempting to make everyone in our family feel guilty about it.

At this point I feel incredibly depressed about having to go through this again and eventually lose another family member. She was very important to me growing up and it depresses me that I can't even talk to her now.

Having to visit another member in a senior care center is going to be really tolling on me and the rest of my family. Especially when I can't even communicate the person I'm there to visit. The nastiness that people develop with Alzheimers makes it especially difficult.

I'm not sure what direction this thread may take but I'm wondering if other 2p2 members have had to gone through similar things with their family members.

[IQof47]

My mom will be turning 56 in a month or so, about 4 years ago she was diagnosed with corticobasal degeneration. I wish I had no idea what that meant, but it basically is a nerve disorder that attacks the brain (I would provide linky but I am computer wetodded). It has some similar symptoms of Parkinson, but she has developed memory loss and also has horrible mood swings like you describe. I have been lucky, I have never dealt with someone who went through a long illness, although I have lost a few close friends to car accidents,etc. I have to admit this has been the most brutal time/event of my life, it has gotten to the point where she can barely speak and I can barely stand to go over there, as terrible as that is. Don't know why I posted this, guess I just wanted to say good luck and try and keep going forward, I let it affect my life at home with my wife and kids for a while, and that only made things more difficult. Best wishes

[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.

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


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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.

[gusmahler]

Not Alzheimers, but a serious disease anyway.

I called my Mom yesterday. I probably haven't talked to her since March or April so. (No we aren't particularly close). After telling her about my new contact information. I segue into her with a simple question, "How's your health?" She said, "Not good. I have lung cancer."

Turns out she was diagnosed in May, but didn't want to tell me. My older sister knows and she moved in with my Mom to make sure she's safe. But my Mom made sure to tell my sister not to tell anyone. So none of my Mom's siblings know. Nor do any of her nieces or nephews. And the only reason my older brother knows is because he happened to be in the room when the doctor broke the news to my Mom. Otherwise, she wouldn't have told him at all. (And here's the odd thing--he lives in the same neighborhood as she does, only 3 houses away. Yet she wouldn't have told him, if she had the choice.)

So anyway, she actually sounded fine on the phone yesterday. A little down because of her disease, but otherwise fine. She insisted that I don't visit (along with my Mom's only grandchild).

So I talked to my sister later. Apparently, my mom is putting up a huge facade. And she does the same thing when my brother visits. She'll go off her oxygen and talk to my brother (or me on the phone yesterday) and interact with us like she's perfectly fine. Then, she spends the rest of the day in her bed because she is completely exhausted. She's supposed to be on oxygen 24 hours a day, but doesn't use it when my brother visits because she doesn't want to worry him. She didn't want to tell me because she didn't want to worry me.

She not only refuses help from my sister. She still insists on cooking dinner for her. Despite the fact that it completely exhausts her. My sister will tell her that she'll bring food home, but my mom will get off of her oxygen and cook, completely exhausting her.

My mom is also refusing any help. She won't even let my sister help her out of bed. She insists on doing it herself.

She's also very fatalistic. She was hospitalized last year for pneumonia and insisted on signing a Do Not Resuscitate order. She is refusing chemo and is no longer seeing her oncologist. Though, for some reason, she scheduled a visit with her general practitioner this week.

One of the weirdest things about her is that, despite not even wanting to tell me that she had lung cancer, I'm apparently the only one of her kids that she'll talk to about her estate. She won't tell my sister anything. She did go through her entire estate with me last year when she was hospitalized, but has since made changes to some of her accounts and won't tell my sister what she did.

She's also completely lost her faith in God. She was always a very religious person, but has recently said she "hated" God and got rid of her Rosary and Bible. While I'm not religious myself, it's worrisome to see that she has rejected God because of her suffering.

I'm flying down there next week with her granddaughter because my sister makes it sound really bad. But I won't tell my Mom very far in advance, because she'll probably refuse to let me visit.

[MaxPower]

I certainly have been through this type of thing and am going through something similar right now. Alzheimer's is especially devastating and difficult to deal with.

I don't want to go into details, but while it certainly painful and difficult to deal with these things, it can also bring family members close together which can be a good thing.

My thought is that if you come from a good family you are lucky, because it will be a lot easier you might even get some satisfaction from dealing with this situation.

Another thing I would suggest is that you make sure you go to the best medical professionals you can find. There is a huge difference in the quality of doctors. It is possible to be misdiagnosed with Alzheimer's. It happened to someone in my family

[bronx bomber]

River, I feel for you. It might be difficult to visit her but you might catch her in a moment of lucidity- it might be from forty years ago but she will be able to talk coherently about it. I helped my aunt with my grandfather until he died and he would occasionally talk about things that happened 40-70 years ago as if they were yesterday. It made me realize that he wasnt just some guy married to my grandmother- and Holy [censored] did that guy live. It made me remember him in a totally different way and i think made me a better person. I know that everyone has something interesting to say, sometimes you just have to be patient. Dealing with him also helped me with my warped sense of humor, sometimes you have to laugh or you cry. Good Luck and best wishes