The Dreaded News - Alzheimer

The past month has been a roller coaster ride. While we knew the doctor knew mother has alzheimer, she officially told mother the diagnosis a few weeks ago. Of course it was not well received. As I sat listening to the doctor explain it to mother and watch mother's disbelief, I thought "Mother, how can you not know this? You know how forgetful you are!" While mother has been afraid since the late 1990's that she might have the horrid disease, now she doesn't belief it at all and wants a second opinion. Her doctor has been seeing her on a regular basis for 4 years and has watched the downward progression.

Mother lived in a retirement community for the past 5 years. We knew she was forgetful and depressed, but she had just buried her 2nd husband and was still grieving. When the elderly go through the stages of grieving, they often become forgetful and depressed so we believed she would come out of it eventually. She did have a period of time that she was better and enjoyed some of the people also living there but then once again became depressed, slept most of the time, stopped being socialable including not going down to eat at meal time. Her doctor told us a year ago that she needed to move in with one of us or go to an assisted living facility. In our "professional" opinion, we didn't think she was that much worse. Then last March, after she had fallen 4 or 5 times, the doctor told us that is was past time to move her and that we needed to make the move immediately. She gave us 2 months to get it done. After MUCH discussion, mother decided that she wanted to move in with my family. On May 31, we moved her into our home.

Major changes had to be made on my family's part - rearranging all of upstairs, adjusting to "Nannie" always being here, reducing the noise level (boys & video games can be loud), etc. Several times she would get confused and go into one of their rooms thinking it was her room. We had several funny episodes of her walking in on them. But both boys and Randy were willing to make the adjustments so we could take care of her.

We hoped being around family and active life would help with her depression and help her not want to stay in bed all day. It seemed to work for the first month, then the honeymoon was over. Additionally, after only a week, we knew she was much worse than we had thought. The disease was more progressed than we realized.

I've experienced more emotional days over the past 4 1/2 months than I have in all of my life put together. On her bad days, everything is my fault. My feelings have been hurt, I've been angry with her, I've felt sorry for her, I've laughed until I've cried, I've worried, and I've felt gratitude for her. Tears have flowed like a river on some days. But each time, God assures me of His loving presence and that I am not alone. I must lean on Him to get through each day.