Lot to remember

It has been a while since I wrote any thing. I have had a lot going on in my life my recovery from my total knee replacement was a little rough and there have been problems I had to deal with, the loss of my wife was not something I was prepared for and it been rough dealing with it. Learning to walk allover again you would think I would have down by now being I have had to learn to walk four time this being the fourth. It been a little over two years and there is still a little soreness in the knee joint, but it is getting better. The biggest problem has been taking care of my wife and her death.

This is how my late wife lived the last five years of her life. It is hard if not impossible to know what a person is thinking or know what is going on in their mind. Having live with her for forty six years I can make a best guess as to what she was thinking. I know she was afraid of everything around her. She almost daily would set and cry, I would ask her what wrong, but she could or would not tell me, when she did all she would “it’s all wrong” all I could do was hold her when she would let me.  If you can, try to put your self in her mine. Just imagine going to bed and then wakening up in a different place with different people and nothing is as what you remember.

You have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s/dementia an “illness affecting memory. a serious illness affecting your brain that makes it difficult for you to remember things and becomes worse as time passes” , along with it you  have the depression that comes with it “a psychiatric disorder showing symptoms such as persistent feelings of hopelessness, dejection, poor concentration, lack of energy, inability to sleep, and, sometimes, suicidal tendencies”.  The place you remember is the home and family when you were very young.

You went to bed last night; you took your meds so you could sleep. You just woke up, and the room is unfamiliar, but some where in the back of your mind you hope you at home.  You find someone in your house, who are they? you don’t recognize them. You are hungry so you try to cook something, but you don’t remember how to turn on the stove.  The stranger fix’s you your breakfast. How do you use the fork or spoon to eat with? You don’t know. 

The thing you have done all your life you don’t know how to do them any more. The door bell ring or the phone and you go hide in the closet. Your world is a strange unknown place. In many ways you are six years old in your mind and the thing you remember no longer exist. You look in a mirror expecting to see you’re self as you were when you were six, but the person looking back at you; you do not recognize. You watch a rerun of a TV show and it is new to you, you watch the move you watched last night and it is new to you but you have watch it a hundred times in the past month.

 At present the medication for Alzheimer’s only slows down the progress of the dementia, like the brakes on a runaway big jig going down a steep grade, they will not stop it. There is some evident that suggest that it is heredity, in my wife case she has two brother and a sister that all have been diagnosed with it and one brother pass two years ago because of it.

All though she was diagnosis six years ago, in hind site she was showing sign of it fifteen years ago.  We all forget some things over time, and for the most part it’s normal, and with a little prodding we do remember some things, with my wife she would forget going to someplace, or knowing someone. Some friends drop by and wanted to go bowling my wife love to bowl. Honey “You remember Sue and Mac they were on our bowling team?” she could not remember being on a team or them. It had only been a year since we were last together.

I don’t know how a person with Alzheimer’s feels if they hurt or are in pain, I do know it was terrifying for my wife. For me as her care giver it has been a nightmare.  At times my wife would say there is nothing wrong with her and I and the doctors were making it all up. I am still trying to understand the illness.

Well this is just the high points of the past two years, things are getting better. I had to give up my house and have been on a hunt for a new place to live. Life goes on.

Thank you and god bless