Posted on 12/02/2007 7:31:53 PM PST by mojo114
A Party brought together the family. I have not seen my sister in two year's and I was shocked. My sister is 67 yrs old but was very busy and vibrant, travels the world with her husband.
Did you see the vacant look in her eyes?
Your statement was beautiful.
My wifes father has it...it came on him like a freight train....he seemed fine then had small bouts of forgetfulness....within a month he needed to be placed in a home and has no idea who he is or anyone else for that matter...
He was always busy and was an intelligent man...read alot and had plenty of hobbies...
Now he is in a home wearing diapers
Life can be cruel
My mother has Alzheimer’s and Dementia. My sister and I have agreed to keep her out of a nursing home for as long as possible. I’m the one who is taking care of her.
I get her out of bed, bathe her, feed her. My sister comes over and help’s to put her to bed.
She’s 85.
Not sure how much longer I can do this, been doing it for three years. But, she’s my mom. She gave me life, now it’s pay back time.
Gotta go.
I do not know if she has been to a doctor for evaluation. My sister, Nancy, is married to a West Point graduate who graduated with General Schwarzkopf. They are very very busy people as a couple. Her husband arranges trips all around the word for them and they always go to the PA Army/Navy Game.
I thank you for your words and your links. It is indeed a disease that suddenly takes away all of good parts of the person within. Fortunately, right now, my sister seems to be quiet. (Not like herself).
It was quite an exercise in humility on all sides.
And humility is a good thing.
Thanks for your kind words.
God’s best to you and yours this C
My love is going to you. I wasn’t living at home when my Dad went nuts. All as we had were reports from Mom. We didn’t take it seriously until Dad wandered off and no one could find him. He did come back, but he was angry.The behavior pattern seems to change.
This may be a small thing, but the Hallmark Hall of Fame special TV movie that was on tonight had Sissy Spacek playing a darling woman who was in the first stages of Alzheimer’s.
It’s called “Pictures of Hollis Woods” and is mostly about a little 12-yo girl who is a foster child - but Josie, the Spacek character, is someone who comes into her life and is featured throughout the show in a very thoughtful and caring way.
The video is supposed to be available through Hallmark.
Yes.
SOME go like that. Which, all things considered, would have preferred for my mother.
But, we play the hand we are dealt.
Mother was a stubborn, proud, often irrational woman who could be extremely demanding and abrasive while thinking she was perfectly fine to behave such ways. And that was in her “saner” moments.
With Alzheimer’s she could not do. It was buckets of grief full of sad over and over relentlessly.
But there was a poetic something to it.
She FINALLY had to just sit and receive. Her ordering and demanding were mostly stilled and didn’t matter when voiced as it was all nonsense and Dad finally had to deal with it as nonsense.
And she had to—as much as was viable at whatever levels—she finally had to accept things as they were without throwing a lot of dust in the air and making everyone around her twice as miserable as she was.
I have personal belief that our spirits are quite aware regardless of our mental faculties. And I believe that her spirit was undergoing some training and educating that she had long resisted until Alzheimer’s blunted her stubbornness and willfulness. Thankfully, I think a lot of that took. She finally had a calmness that I’d rarely seen, if ever. Yeah, the vacantness was often there. But thankfully not always and not only.
The last bit of God’s humor . . . she went to pot on the pot. She had a heart attack on the toilet.
I can imagine her laughing about that for eons to come.
Six years ago, I began driving a taxi in SF. One of my first fares was a neuropsychologist. I asked her what the most interesting thing happening in her field was. She said that within six to eight years – ten tops – there would be a cure for Alzheimer’s.
A couple of months later a venture capitalist who specializes in biotech got in my cab. I told him what she said. He scoffed that the neuropsychologist was delusional, that it would take the Food & Drug Administration at least ten years to approve any drug. In other words, he had no intention of investing in an Alzheimer’s cure.
A couple weeks after that I had a lawyer in my taxi who specialized in legal issues dealing with AIDS cures. I spoke to her about the disagreement between the neuropsychologist and the VC. She pointed out that Alzheimer’s has two potential cures. One will be for folks who are identified at a young age - possibly in their teens. That one could take a couple lifetimes to test.
However, cures are also being developed for people who are suffering right now. For them, she said that the FDA would fast-track a treatment, like they now do for AIDS, and it would take only a year.
A few months later, an Alzheimer’s researcher told me that his company had cured the disease in mice, but that when it went to human trials it caused encephalitis, which could be lethal. They had to quit.
Months later I drove an MD to the airport. I told him the story. He claimed to have been up for Surgeon General in the Clinton Administration and that the researcher was really not offering any hope. His reasoning was that scientists have no idea what Alzheimer’s even is. When they claim to cure it in rodents, they are guessing that they have even produced it in the mice to begin with.
Then another VC – after several more months – got into my taxi. He agreed with the MD. His comment was that half of all cancer researchers can cure it in mice, but fail with humans.
A few more months went by. I happened to get the researcher back in the taxi and told him what the MD and VC said. His answer was that one of the test subjects had died – not from their experiment. When they did an autopsy, her Alzheimer’s had been cured.
A few months after that, I drove a lawyer who works with bio-tech and venture capitalists. I told her what I had found out. She said that it was true that a successful drug had been developed but that the encephalitis problem caused cash for further enquiry to dry up.
Well, last Christmas, two women got in my cab. As I drove them to the airport, I asked them what they do for a living. They said that they were both brain researchers. I began telling them the above story. They interrupted me and said that they both worked for Elan, the company that had cured Alzheimer’s in mice. According to them, more than one autopsy had been done on humans to confirm that the drug works. Better yet, Elan believes that it has solved the encephalitis problem and that they were - as we spoke - in human trials.
I do not yet know if the trials have been completed. To be honest those women were strangers in a cab, but they seemed like the real deal.
You might check out this web site, especially the pics of mice brains before and after their drug: http://www.elan.com/research_development/Alzheimers/Default.asp
Further, my advice is to spend as much time as you need to (possibly a couple hundred hours) to get as deeply into the who, what, when, where and why of what researchers are thinking and working on.
The National Institute of Health (NIH) would be a good place to begin.
Good luck.
Good luck to you, from one who has been thru it, trust me, you will benefit in the end, as will she. To give her dignity, even if she can never know it, is a great gift to your mother.
God Bless.
There is a lot of confusion about diagnosis of Alzheimers and other dementias. Make sure she gets a good evaluation, if you can.... and if you don’t think the Dr has thoroughly examined her get her to another.
FIL G had what they called Alzheimer’s, but we never thought it was. He never got worse, never got combative, never wandered, never forgot us or who he was. It was just an easy out for the Dr. and couldn’t be proved or disproved until after his death. We believe he suffered from permanent short term memory loss as a result of anemia caused by a B vitamin shortage.
You could set a plate of cookies in front of him and he would say “ I believe I’ll have a cookie!” Five minutes later he would sat the same thing, and on and on until they were gone, if you didn’t remove them. He forgot he had eaten one or more! But he could tell you the formula for aluminum, and what he did as a boy, and knew where he was.
Because of a legal battle with the wicked step sibs we had to fight to get him out of an Alzheimer’s ward. He would ask us why he was locked up in a crazy ward. (Thank God we finally got him out) It is heartbreaking to watch, but there can be improvements, both with proper diagnosis and also examining what medicines they are taking. FIL G improved a lot when we removed 5 un-necessary drugs from his regimin.
Thank you for prayers. I am so upset after seeing my sister. She is a a fit woman, a woman who always took care of herself. I understand your problem because my Dad got really bad they put him in a home and you know what?! He fell in love with a woman in the home. It was the strangest thing. The family all gathered around him for his birthday, including my Mom and he didn’t recognize anyone much but he acted OK..
I appreciate you telling me about getting through to the husband to talk. I think I can do that., I will try.
Hey Cab, I love you.
Love your narrative. Have no reason to doubt any of it.
However, the NWO GLOBALIST
puppet masters Shrillery et al are so slaish to
have NO intention of curing lots of “useless eaters” in their terms.
They are much more interested in decreasing the global population to 200 million.
GRRR
Thank you for your insight.
My Grandmother had Alzheimer’s. It was terrible and I think it must be one of the worst things that could happen to you, to lose your mind. She did seem to do better with things in the distant past. She could talk with you at length about her childhood, for example.
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