My
name is Carol. Well it's not REALLY Carol, but it's a tribute to the
most caring & compassionate person in my life. She made me who I am,
and now I need to use that same caring and compassion to guide her
through these tough years to come. My mother has Alzheimer's disease and
was diagnosed on November 29, 2012. I'd been telling doctors for almost
2 years that something was terribly wrong and it wasn't "Just a little
bit of dementia that is normal for her age", as they kept telling me.
Finally, I got a doctor who listened and sent us to a memory clinic. I
knew in my heart how the evaluation would turn out. Although I don't
know much about the disease, I knew what my Mom was suffering from was not normal memory loss due to aging. She, literally, could not handle
complex thought anymore. A woman who loved to read was not getting past
the first few pages of a book without forgetting what she read. She
started forgetting names of people closest to us...my husband, his
family, my best friends. She'd try really hard and know who she was
talking about, but "couldn't pull their name". Besides, this awful
disease tends to run in my family. That terrifies me.
When
the diagnosis for Alzheimer's came back positive, the small glimmer of
hope that maybe I had been over-reacting was destroyed. I was
devastated. Instead of the hope of finding some help to recover her
memory and basic cognitive skills, I got the sadness of realizing that
it'll only get worse. Sure, there are medications to help slow the
process, but they don't stop it. Nothing can. That's why I've decided to
try and make the best of this journey and "Find the Fun" of the moments
we have and of life, in general.
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