support

Yesterday I went to the monthly AD support meeting.

I have been part of this group for 4 or 5 years and this time we had a guest speaker.

The guest lady had been an administrator of a series of nursing homes and Alzheimer’s units and had a lot of insight into dealing with behavior issues.

While she did not have a lot to say that I had never heard before, she put a point on it and made the process a lot more logical.

“They never loose their intelligence.” They may loose their memory, but their intelligence is still there. It may comes out but seldom, but it is there. Do not treat them as children.

Our reality, the one we think is the right one, may not be their reality. We have to bend to theirs sometimes. I remember when my step dad was in the hospital, not long before he died. He was hallucinating and he said to my brother who was visiting him: “Ben, look at those big green bugs on the ceiling.”

Ben carefully looked at the ceiling and said: “They sure are pretty, aren’t they Dad.” There were no bugs but Ben was into Dad’s reality.

Of course every AD person is different and she kept saying: “Give it a try.”

Some of us have attended this group together for a good while, but there are always people who come for the first, and often the last time. We who attend regularly feel bad that we cannot help them more.

Today there was a visitor, a lady who was very angry. She was angry at her siblings for not doing their part caring for their mother. She was angry because they did things behind her back. She was angry with her mother, who has dementia, because Mom would say hateful things to her. She was angry with herself.

I just imagined two angry women, mom and daughter really going at each other. I suggested a bit more humor, but I don’t think she was capable of humor now, if ever. Suggestions were made on diverting mom’s behavior. We tried to remind her that what mom was saying was the disease talking, but in the end I don’t think anything pierced her anger.

She did not find a solution she could live with, indeed I am not sure there is one.

She was just one ball of anger. I felt sorry for her and her family.

But I am glad I went.