Alzheimer's Disease

I am going to attempt to write this entry as coherently as possible, but please, bear with me, as I have, roughly, a million and one emotions and thoughts fluttering around in my head about this subject and just need to get them out.

My grandma is currently has Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and she's been dying from it for the past few years. Unfortunately, she isn't the first person in the family to fall victim to the disease, although, I am much closer to her than the other family member. When people ask how she's doing, I never know what to say. Even on a good day, her best is still heading towards a certain death. So, how am I supposed to answer that? To say, "She's doing great,"...well, that's not really true. She might be doing great in the sense that she remembers who I am, but her brain is still shriveling up and she is still going to die, so, as I said, even on her best day, she's still doing pretty poorly... But, I just smile and shrug and hope they don't continue to press the issue.

Now, I'm not going to be so brash as to sit here and say that any disease is worse than another one. I've lost many relatives from everything ranging from prolonged battles with cancers to random accidents, so I feel that I can say with some measure of authority that Alzheimer's might be one of the worst, if not the worst, diseases to die from. It is hard not only on the individual, but also on the family. The repercussions of the disease are nearly immeasurable. Everyone I know that has been affected by the disease (myself included) agrees that we would rather take our lives than have to put ourselves and our families through the prolonged painful, degrading, and emotional process of living with and dying from AD. I don't even know where to begin...

Try to imagine, if you will, having to take care of someone on a daily basis. Now, you love this person dearly (whether they ever expressed that love back, now that's a different story). You take so much time and energy into caring for the person, working so hard to only momentarily bring a smile to their face, only to have them two seconds later either 1) not know who you are or 2) what they had just experienced. So, all this effort and struggle (and trust, it usually is a struggle, if not a down-right fight) you put into making them as comfortable and as happy as possible is forgotten in a matter of minutes...as if you never done anything in the first place. Do you know what type of love it takes to do this? Aaaand, on a daily basis??? Do you have any idea how much pain this brings?

And, the situation only gets worse when that individual was not necessarily nice or a "good" during their normal days. (This is a trend I am starting to notice as well...it seems that no matter how hard death is to deal with, it is always infinitely harder when it is someone genetically close to you that you actually don't really love or know that well, but you wind up spending their last days with them...but, this is a completely different story I'm digressing into...)

And then comes the guilt for not being there. We have lived way out here in Jersey since I was born, while the rest of the family has remained in Michigan. They are the ones dealing with this stuff on a daily basis. Sure, when we visit (which we have been trying to increase the amount of times we go home), we do as much as we can to take her to the doctors and clean things up and give the rest of the family a break from the monotony of this, but there is only so much you experience in ~10 day segments of time. Granted, those aren't necessarily the easiest weeks, and it is always difficult to get back on the plane and leave, knowing the situation you are leaving behind and how much of a benefit to other members of the family you are when you are there. Plus, there is only so much one can do over the phone/internet... We seriously considered moving to Michigan, especially after my graduation, but unless my mom can find a job within her company out there, we don't see that happening. But, you never know...it is still a possibility.

Finally, there is struggle with putting them in a nursing home, and knowing that that will probably be the death of them. Nursing homes in America are horrible. Patients are frequently abused or neglected - basically, left to die in their beds. And I really don't know how much I can ask from the staff at these facilities. Clearly, I don't expect abuse or complete neglect, but, there have been many times people in the family have gotten absolutely frustrated dealing with my grandma. Part of AD is the degeneration of the brain, resulting in a person of unstable emotions, a person who often and easily gets confused and lies (thinking they are telling the truth, mind you), a person is stubborn and hides things for no reason, one who becomes indignant one minute and then acts like an innocent 5-year-old in the blink-of-an-eye. There have been moments when we have all wanted to scream at her, and that's our own flesh and blood that we love. How much easier is it for a perfect stranger to come into the same experience and just give up and leave them be? Or to snap and shove them aside (not intentionally hard), but these are the elderly, and they have little strength, and one thing leads to another and one wrong slip can result in a broken hip or worse...

Either way, it is a lonely place, and you know that committing her there is sentencing her to death. Not that death isn't coming anyway, but still...nobody wants to be the one to "pull the trigger," let alone on their own mother.

There are many things I left out, but this situation encompasses too much. I haven't even touched upon the financial aspects of this whole thing or on the current living situation or on the joys of dealing with the government. There are just so many bittersweet, or just bitter, memories popping into my mind as I sit here and type. I even cried while writing this, and you know I don't really cry. I hate it, hate it, hate it!!! So, if you will, remember my family in prayers, even if you don't know us. I would really appreciate it.