Well, yesterday my mother-in-law moved into what will be her home for the foreseeable future — an assisted living facility. What we had hoped would run smoothly turned out to have been planned by the Three Stooges or their closest friends. First came a communications snafu between the rehab hospital, the assisted living facility and the hospice folks. From the description, it sounded like something right out of “who’s on first.” Late morning had, by then, turned into mid-afternoon.
Then, the young man who’d been tasked with transporting her didn’t know how to operate the gurney. And he didn’t know where he was going. Finally, what should have been a five minute trip having turned into an hour, she arrived at the right place. You can just imagine her state of mind at that point! One look at her room, which her daughter had lovingly arranged with some of the furniture and cherished decorator items from her home, and it was pronounced “a 2×4.” Nothing was right (mostly because it wasn’t home). She liked the rehab hospital better (although it contained none of her personal possessions).
Her sister-in-law had made arrangements to join her for “happy hour” in her new digs, but after all the delays had given up and gone ahead with her own plans. Meanwhile, the staff had turned the fridge in her room to maximum cool in preparation, which her daughter didn’t catch in her attempt to stock it with cheese and soda to go with her traditional scotch. The soda water had frozen solid in the glass bottle, which had cracked, sending bits of glass throughout the fridge. Mom decided she didn’t want to have dinner in the dining room, so her daughter went out to get them something they could share in her room. Mom went on to throw what would be considered a tantrum in a child, berating every family member on how terrible it was, how they were doing this against her wishes, how she could live on her own just fine, and on and on. All this despite the fact that every doctor who has seen her in the past month has told us and her otherwise. When her daughter finally left for the evening, she proceeded to call her sister-in-law and repeated all the charges. Now, this sister-in-law is 90 years old but fully in possession of her faculties, and is a family member who will push back when necessary. But all that accomplished was the announcement that she was going to check herself out in the morning and take a taxi back to her house. Needless to say, everyone was in an uproar.
Fast forward to eight o’clock this morning. He daughter phoned to see how she was, and Mom told her that she couldn’t talk, that someone was going to come and take her to breakfast. Later in the morning, she was happily playing bingo. She was delighted with her bright and airy room and the effort her daughter had made to make it lovely. Another day, and all the commotion of the evening before had been forgotten. And that’s what makes it so hard on everyone else. Mom has forgotten saying all manner of hateful things, but the rest of us haven’t. Her self-censoring system doesn’t work any more. And when she’s tired towards the end of a day, she spews. If she were a two-year-old, you’d put her in “time out.” But she’s 88. The only way to accomplish “time out” is to take yourself out of the situation as soon as she gets going. You can’t reason with her any more than you can with a child in the midst of a tantrum.
Dementia, whether due to Alzheimer’s Disease or some other cause, is the pits — both for the patient and the family and friends.
