Don't ever get old...

Hiya Stevie baby, what's shakin'?

I just want to give you a word of advice: don't ever get old.

I mean, yeah I know you're heading up on 63 soon, but that's really NOT very old.  I'm talkin' 89 here. Don't ever get old to the point of being 89.  From my experience with Florence, that age royally sucks.

It's so frustrating and such an overwhelming feeling of helplessness to watch her degenerate deeper into dementia. That's what is going on right now, she's transitioning into a deeper confusion, mixed with anger, mixed with crying hysterically about nothing, and I just want to scream because I can't do anything about it. She had a VERY bad day yesterday, claiming to hear voices talking about her, (paranoia), and having dreams about strange psychotic things, and becoming angry and upset about something so minor it's just unbelievable.

So, the only thing that I have discovered, quite by accident, that actually HELPS, is to tell her that we don't know what to do--but GOD DOES, so "let's pray about it." And so I held her hands, she closed her eyes, and I prayed, "Dear God, please help Florence. She's having a very tough time right now and we're not sure what is causing it, or how to fix it. Something is wrong, God, and only You can know what that is, and how to make it better. Please take away Florence's difficulty with remembering, and take away the confusion and the anger, please help her to have a GOOD DAY, every day, and give her peace."

She seemed to calm down much more after that. But I spent at least two hours yesterday just talking to her, trying to reason with her, explaining what dementia is, and why she's having these issues, and also telling her what we're doing about it.  We had her blood drawn, we turned in a urine sample, and today we're going to have a CT scan on her brain. She has a small nodule (lump) in her left lung, but it hasn't grown or done anything to affect her in over a year, so the doctors all say "don't worry about it." Most likely, it is cancer, but she's too old to operate on to remove it.  BUT...that could also be spreading to other parts of her body, and/or her brain.  If they discover a tumor in her brain, that would explain this strange behavior.

She's an attention whore, I call her, (much to Pete's dismay, but he agrees), and this is draining me of all my energy. But, it's a defense mechanism, that she is projecting ten-fold in order to hide her fears of growing old. She still FEELS like she's in her 40's, but she's 89 years old, and this is confusing to her. She cannot DO the things she used to do when she was 40, just like I can't do the things I used to do when I was in my 20's. She's always been a perfectionist, a conservative, everything has to be perfect, and if it isn't, she gets frustrated and angry with herself.  I tell her that she's the hardest person on herself than anybody else ever will be, and life is hard enough without that unnecessary stuff she creates inside herself. She agrees, but doesn't realize that's what she is doing when she's doing it.

Alzheimer's is a horrible thing to watch happen to someone. Forgetting where you put your keys is one thing, but when that slides deeper into "who are you," to someone she sees every day, that is just plain heart breaking.  She's not quite at that point yet, but she's on her way.  She gets Pete (her son) mixed up all the time, as her husband and as her father.  Last night, I suggested to him that he sit down with her and write out some Christmas cards from her, but she had a strange look in her eye when he suggested that, and he said afterwards that "it was the look of "okay daddy."  But he didn't think much of it, and sat down at the dining room table to start helping her make out cards. A few minutes later, he told her that "Rebecca and I have already sent out OUR cards, so these are from YOU Mom."  And that suddenly caused Florence to burst into hysterical tears, crying about how "these cards should be from the FAMILY, not just from ME and I'm always left OUT of EVERYTHING, and you didn't TELL me these would just be MY cards, I thought we would send them out as a COUPLE...(he was her husband), but now you've done them with HER (I'm the other woman her husband is cheating on her with), and what will people THINK?!" She threw the cards down, I ran in and tried to comfort her, and she wouldn't let me hug her, she said, "Let me go, just let me go, you don't understand!" and she walked to her adjacent bedroom and slammed the door.

Pete and I just stood there, stunned and confused, not sure what to do.  He got up, left the room, and went upstairs, feeling upset.  I went to sit down in the living room, hearing Florence sobbing in her bedroom next door.  A few minutes later, when I didn't go to her, she came back out again, and threw a Christmas wreath that she had made into my lap, and said, "And I don't want THIS thing anymore EITHER!" and she turned around to walk away back to her room.  I had bought her a wreath to decorate to help her get into the Christmas spirit, because she complained that she "didn't have it anymore."

Instantly, I was pissed.  I stood up, sat the wreath down, and followed her into her room.  I said, "Florence May Hoch, you sit down right now and talk with me about this. You do NOT throw things at me, no matter HOW angry or upset you feel, do you hear me? That is NOT ACCEPTABLE. I will not allow that in my household. If you have a problem, you will sit down and talk with me about it. So I'm here, and you and I need to figure out what's going on with you right now."

She sobbed and cried and spilled her guts about how I've "taken her son away from her," and "her husband is cheating on her with me," too, and she's heartbroken and lonely, and feels left out, her four children hate her guts now, and she doesn't know why---(I showed her a photo of her TWO children and corrected her...but she insisted she had 4...but I figured out that the other two she was referring to were her SISTER'S children who glommed onto her after their mother died, so she helped raise them)....and she's right, those two nieces are the ones who put her into a nursing home and spent her money, and they don't write to her anymore or call her either, and that makes her very upset.

She then went on and on about how "her mother just died recently" (17 years ago), and how upset she is about that, too, because "nobody told her." I reminded her that she attended her mother's funeral with Pete.  But that does not comfort her.  This is a recurring false memory that she has over and over, nearly every day, and I don't know how else to comfort her about it.  She finally asked Pete to see her mother's death certificate, to prove to herself that her mother died long ago, and not just recently.  Even seeing it, though, didn't help.

Then she said she hears people talking badly about her all the time----I stopped her and said, "Florence, without your hearing aids, you can't hear me sitting right in front of you, trying to talk to you---I have to repeat everything I say at least 3 times, and louder each time---so how the HELL can you hear ANYTHING like voices outside of your bedroom?  It's just not possible. Does that make ANY sense?"  She stopped, blew her nose, and thought about it.  "No, that doesn't make much sense, does it? The voices must be in my HEAD then! I'm going CRAZY!" and she sobbed again.  "I'm going crazy and now you'll put me away in a nursing home and throw away the key!" And into hysterics she went again.

I promised her....I lifted my hands to pretend there were stacks of Bibles in them....and I said, "Florence, I am promising you on these imaginary Bibles in my hands, and if I had a dozen of them, I would hold them up high for you to really see them...but since I don't, I am telling you before God and everyone in the universe, I am promising you, that we will NEVER put you in a nursing home."  I added, "We may have to put you in the hospital at some point, or hire a nurse to come in to help out here at home, but we'll never put you away in a nursing home."  She relaxed a bit after that.

So I finally calmed her down after talking to her awhile, and I said, "Florence, your outburst has really upset Pete a lot, he doesn't know why you were so angry and upset at him for trying to help you with your Christmas cards. I want you to go out there to him, and apologize, because he's feeling badly and confused too. Will you do that?"  She agreed, and came out with me, "Oh son! I am so sorry!" she said, and began to cry again, "I don't know what's the matter with me! I'm not usually like this!"  He said, "Oh momma, I love you, I will try to help you, it's okay, we're a team, and we'll get through this together."

They hugged, and included ME in the hug, and I said, "Now Florence, I want you to know that Pete and I did get married, but YOU are the most important person in his life---you're his MOTHER, and you always will be, and I will never try to take him away from you. You're here WITH us, you're a part of our lives, and we WANT you here." Pete agreed and said similar things to her, and she hugged us both and thanked us, and then she was exhausted and went to bed.

WHEW. So this is how I spend my days, on a roller coaster, trying to deal with an irrational confused person and trying to figure out what she's talking about, picking apart the things she says, asking for more specifics and descriptions, trying to understand what's going on in her head.  It's not easy, and it leaves me feeling completely drained.  She needs a routine, she needs to get out of the house, and away from me, so I can have a break, so I'm taking her tomorrow to the assisted living place down the street, where she's gone to many times for physical therapy. I'm dropping her off and picking her up at the end of the day. She will pay $40 bucks to enjoy a day of planned activities with the residents there. She's not too enthused about it, but it will be a big help to have her do this twice a week at least.

She's now decided NOT to send Christmas cards. We've put them away. She woke up today in a much better mood, more relaxed, more like her normal self.  We think perhaps her night pill, Depakote, is the culprit for all this stuff happening.  Without it, she seems fine the next day. With it, she is groggy, irritable, and angry about something.  But, we don't know for sure what is causing this.  She's never been like this before, so it's all new to us.

Anyway, just don't get old. That's all I'm saying.  It just royally sucks shit through a straw.

Merry Christmas, and I hope you never have to deal with someone who has dementia or Alzheimers.

I won't get old.  I have decided to "step off" when I'm 50.

Love, Rebecca