Really, what is the point?
Clearly dementia of any form is the cruelest of diseases. It doesn’t improve over time it only gets worse regardless of any medicines or strategies you employ. The person who has it is impervious to these facts and only thinks that they are having some senior moment. You cannot how however hard you try rationalize with this person because it only leads to frustration on both parties. You pray and hope and wish and think maybe they will get better, but you know in your heart it’s a fruitless effort. You truly love this person, well maybe not everyone does love who their caring for, but in my case I do because she’s my mother and all I ever had. Never knew my father and the facts behind that are still fuzzy. Truth is I never really cared that I didn’t have a father. Yea, it would have been nice, but that wasn’t in the plans. So I was raised by my mom and grandmother until she died of emphysema in 1977. I still miss her to this day. Point is, you are basically dealing with the truly walking dead, because my mother however hard I try is not who she was formally and never will be again. She is basically reverting to childhood behavior and as such I have become the parent. I say it’s cruel because the person you are caring for will have such lucid moments now and then that you get suckered into having a normal conversation only to have it interrupted by some nonsensical statement in the conversation that it’s like getting punched in the stomach with a reality punch. Then you go back to this reality and realize that they truly are the walking dead. It only worsens over the long haul and will become more and more unbearable, and yet you remain hopeful of some non-existing cure or miracle. It doesn’t come and it never will come. Yet you continue to hold out hope. What a complete a futile effort this is. I have read some many of your stories both positive and bad and realize the total futility of it all. No matter how hard we try, the outcome will always be the same. That’s why I ask what the point is? I remember thank God I can still do this, the movie “Soylent Green” staring Chariton Heston where older people went to this place to relieve older memories of what it used to be like in their younger days and basically were euthanized and according to the plot turned into crackers for people to eat as the earth was over populated now and there was no more food. Looking back at that movie at the time I thought was a depressing outcome, now I’m not so sure it wouldn’t be a bad idea. My greatest fear now is that I get this disease and there will be no one to care for me. I truly hope that God is understanding at that time because I might just end up ending it all instead of facing the inevitable. Really what is the point?
I totally get where you're coming from. And I agree with you that dementia is the worst of all diseases (in my opinion).
Having dementia is my worst nightmare and I've told my daughter that if I am ever diagnosed with it I will give it one year and then I'm out of here. I will not live like that or put my daughter through that for what could be years.
My beloved grandmother had Alzheimer's and my aunt and cousin would be so mean to her, like my grandmother was purposely being difficult or as if she could help it. They would argue with her, try to bully my grandma into not believing what she believed. It was awful to watch.
I have patients occasionally who live on a memory care unit and that is the scariest place for me. So many people wandering around in a daze, clutching for me as I walk through, and they have no idea what's going on. There's a nursery with baby dolls and cribs and a pretend kitchen with pots and pans and fake food.....Sometimes I wonder why God would let that happen to a person. And like what you said, what is the point??
I hope when I become more elderly [I already feel old at 68 from dealing with 90+ parents who are still independent but scaring me half the time because they still think they are much younger, like Dad cleaning the gutters of their home], when I can no longer be useful to society, I rather disappear from this earth. Make room for someone else who really needs that bed and care.