Who Cares What Nansi Thinks?

www.dictionary.com defines the two terms as follows:

dementia: severe impairment or loss of intellectual capacity and personality integration, due to the loss of or damage to neurons in the brain.

alzheimer's: a progressive form of pre-senile dementia that is similar to senile dementia except that it usually starts in the 40s or 50s; first symptoms are impaired memory which is followed by impaired thought and speech and finally complete helplessness.

The two seem interchangeable. I spoke with one of the nurse's where I work and asked what difference there was between the two diagnoses. She explained that with dementia the patient can have almost total recall of their life. They don't always lose their memory. Alzheimer's involves a loss of memory. Some alzheimer's sufferers find themselves mentally existing in times past.

I once heard of a married couple who lived together in a nursing home. They had to separate them as her Alzheimer's progressed. She reached a place in her mind that took place BEFORE she met her husband and became very frightened of the strange man in her room. Sad.

My mom has dementia. I don't know if she's typical, but I can tell you how it affects her. She tends to form scenarios based upon a snippet of something she thinks she saw. For instance, the other day I took her to my husband's family dinner. A woman there reminded her of my boss. Mom thought it WAS my boss and asked me why she was there. Did she just come over or was she somehow related to my husband? But the woman was never at the dinner. Mom insists that she was.

Before I removed a phone from Mom's room, I'd get calls in the middle of the night. She'd swear that she was sitting in the parking lot covered with snow. One morning this past February, Mom called to tell me that a large black man had spent the night in her recliner. She said he pasted pictures of Martin Luther King, Jr. all over her walls then just sat in her chair and watched her sleep. I later figured out that Mom must have fallen asleep with the TV on. There was probably a Black History program on that intruded into her sleeping conscience.

Before Mom was admitted into the nursing home, she'd been hospitalized because a UTI had gone into sepsis. She was out of her mind, bless her heart. She called me at work and said, "They keep trying to tell me I'm in the hospital, but I'm NOT, I'm in a farm house." She described the furnishings, the gingham curtains, even the flowered couch with doily pillows. Then she said, "If YOU tell me I'm in a hospital, I'll believe you. But it feels like I'm in the farm house." In that same hospital stay, she kept sending the nurses down the hall to "go get my daughter, she just passed the doorway!" And the nurse's would bring some poor soul into the room while my mom chided them for denying that they knew her.

Keep in mind that my "expertise" comes from my personal experience. I'm not a nurse, just a daughter who landed a job in her mother's nursing home. In the early months I would make myself sick trying to bring my mother into the bright light of truth. I'd try to prove to her that she was imagining things.

Finally, I confided in a friend who had also worked in a nursing home. She gave me the best advice. She said, "Don't try to punch holes in her reality. Repeat back to her what she's said and offer sympathy when appropriate." So now when Mom says, "That aide called me an old battle ax." I say, "An aide called you a battle ax?? No wonder you're so upset. How can I help?" Mom just needs to be heard.

One of the most heartbreaking things my mom said to me was the other day. She came to my office and said, "I need to ask you something. Am I imagining that I could sew long ago? I seem to remember making you beautiful clothing, but maybe I'm just wishing." I said, "Mom, you sewed like an artist." I went on to describe some of the outfits she'd made for me. She looked sad but satisfied.

I wish she would slip just a little bit farther. As she is now, there's enough of the "old mom" left to know that what she is now isn't right.