Dementia is Tricky
- Author Annette Gonzalez
- Published December 9, 2008
- Word count 458
When my mother was in the hospital for the last time, we took my father to visit her. He clinched his fist and demanded that "she beat this thing!" He understood at that very moment that she was very ill. How could he be so in the moment one minute and completely out of it the next moment?
My father had dementia. We, his children, wanted our daddy to be "in the present" all the time again. But of course this would never happen. It was very difficult to carry on a conversation with him like I had always done in the past. He would ask me questions that would make no sense and I tried to make sense of them. My husband would often tell me, "don’t get frustrated just answer him by saying anything. He won’t remember it 15 minutes from now."
After my mother’s death, he seemed to be in his fantasy world more often. I called it "La-la land" or his "zone". I would stare into his small, hazel eyes trying to see the "daddy" I loved, but he wasn’t there. I often thought his world of fantasy was a great place. But it was no fun for those of us on the outside of his world.
My protector, my hero, my daddy was no longer in a position to put me on a pedestal, to give his political opinions, to provide words of wisdom, or to know who some of his family members were. His dementia would come and go. You never knew when he would be in his "zone" or in reality. He always recognized us, his children, for which we were very thankful. We asked if there was any medication to help his memory but there was only Alzheimer’s medication which he took but did not help. There is no medication for dementia.
Things to remember when your parent has dementia:
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Be patient with your parent and with yourself
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Don’t expect that your parent will remember what happened yesterday or one hour ago
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Don’t argue with your parent about facts you know to be true
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Enjoy the precious time you spend with your parent and
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Don’t try to make sense of why they know things one day and not the next day
It is difficult to accept that your parent is no longer the same person when they have dementia. Your parent may look the same but does not act the same. It is difficult to accept that we can never go back—back to the time when our parent made sense. And most of all, it is difficult to accept that I lost my father twice –first to dementia and then to death.
Annette struggled with coping with the loss of her mother, and then five months later, her father passed away. This is when she began to write and speak about her parents' deaths. What resulted was that Annette provided others who had lost their parents comfort and direction through her writing and speeches.
Visit Annette's blog, http://www.marinasabundance.blogspot.com - in memory of her mother, Marina Gonzalez.
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