Editor’s Note: I wrote this a few days ago but it took me this long to get up the nerve to post it. Alzheimer’s is a topic I’ve avoided in the past for obvious reasons. Mom can’t read my blogs anymore, so here we go.
I sent myself flowers from my mom for my birthday later this week. I know that’s kinda sad sounding, but we’re going out to dinner on Saturday night and when she gets upset because she thinks she forgot to get me something, I’ll show her the pictures of the bouquet and make her feel better.
My mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s several years ago. We noticed problems as far back as 2013, right after she moved from Maryland to Florida, but then my stepdad had a stroke, and she had to care for him full time. It was easy for her to hide what was going on because we were all always asking about my stepdad. But my grandmother had Alzheimer’s, and my paternal great-aunt probably had it (it was back when everybody just had “dementia”) and I think, deep down, I knew what was going on. And mom did, too. She wasn’t willing to accept it and that made it even harder to get treatment.
When my stepdad died in 2022, mom fell apart. The memory docs who diagnosed the Alzheimer’s said that caring for her husband had been what tethered her to reality, and when he died, that string broke. She’d recently suffered multiple bad UTIs, and they cooked her brain. It was a nightmare. We had just moved to Georgia from Maryland and mom was about 90 minutes away in Jacksonville. She couldn’t be alone, and we couldn’t be there full time. She got fired by two different home care companies in a week for being so difficult.
Flash forward to now – because I’m not ready to talk about what happened after that – and mom is doing really well and lives in Georgia, near us. She’s in an assisted living facility on the island next door to Jekyll. She has a 90-year-old boyfriend down the hall and still loves to travel. Shopping remains her favorite past time (God help us all). She told a doctor last week that it is currently 2021 and she lives in Florida. Alrighty then. Last year, she told the doctor she didn’t know the name of the President (Biden) but she knew she didn’t like him. Bahahahaha! She hasn’t lost her entire mind.
I think dealing with my mom’s Alzheimer’s may be the most difficult thing I’ve ever encountered in my life. If you know my mom, you get it. She doesn’t like being told what to do. She doesn’t want any help. She won’t allow us to hang up white boards with reminders. And she took down the clock that told her what day it was because she “didn’t need it.”
Instead, she calls me about five times a day to confirm what her plans are for the rest of the week. She can’t read a calendar anymore. I don’t understand it – she was the most organized, list-making mom in the world. It’s the strangest skill to have lost. But seriously, it drives her crazy and I totally get that.
Mom has the loveliest room in her facility, and she’s decorated it beautifully. But she doesn’t want to be there. She wants to live independently. She can’t. Never again. We found too many burned up stove pots and too many unopened bottles of important prescription medication. She also cannot live with us because I’d like to keep my marriage intact. Too much time with mom makes me nutty and then I take it out on Bill. That’s not going to work.
Years ago, when my grandmother was put into the Rockville Nursing Home with Alzheimer’s, my mom told me that if she got Alzheimer’s, I should put her in assisted living rather than let her ruin my life like my grandma did to her. At the time, I argued that I wouldn’t ditch her like that and made jokes about a guest house with locks on the outside. But then it actually happened, and I spent a lot of time with her for the first few months. First, we basically lived in Jax. Then we tried bringing her up to Jekyll for a few nights at a time, and that was pretty much a disaster. I felt like the biggest failure in the world when I went to tour senior facilities near our new home. A good daughter would keep her mother with her, right? But what should a good wife do?
I’ve been struggling for a while over whether to blog about mom and her Alzheimer’s. I’d love to put it in a book, but I can’t do that while she’s still reading everything I write. I think she would recognize herself and feel hurt – or not. She doesn’t remember that she has Alzheimer’s. But I won’t risk it. But she’ll never read my blog because Internet navigation is too tricky for her now.
Writing a blog on a regular basis again was nearly impossible for me to do without talking about my mom’s situation because she has become one of the biggest things in my life. She was always a big part of my life but she didn’t live nearby for 20 years of it. Now I’m responsible for her. Thank God for my husband who goes over to take her to appointments and bring her goodies several times a week in addition to the time we spend with her at our home and travelling. It’s a lot more pressure on me – I’m the complaints department. Bill gets the sunnier side of mom. She adores him. He’s her “favorite person in the world.” Good, at least I did something right.
Memory care professionals keep telling us to “treat her like a toddler” when she’s difficult. The thing is, I didn’t have any children of my own so I never developed the skillset for coping with an obstinate toddler. My step-grandchildren were toddlers when we lived in Puerto Rico so I missed out on the harder years of grandparenting. I can’t spank my mom (the woman who carried a wooden spoon in her glove compartment) or put her in time out. And correcting her doesn’t accomplish anything because she’ll forget the conversation in a couple of minutes anyway. Best I can do is grit my teeth, and try not to let my face show what I’m thinking.
I have to stop myself now – that’s the dangerous thing with this topic. I could talk for hours. But I need to get back into my sound studio because those audiobooks aren’t going to record themselves, and I had to take a few weeks off because I had an ear infection and couldn’t hear squat. But now I’m back and almost healthy and I have to get this done. Goal is to have Escape to Jekyll Island finished this week. Fingers crossed!
Until next time, happy reading!
Sandy
P.S. The picture at the top was taken in September at our 20th anniversary party. We all had a fabulous time.