Tag: Alzheimer’s

Posted in Death and Dying, Elderly, Loneliness

Checking-in for a Different Ending

Posted on by Maureen

When I heard that Gene Hackman and his wife were found dead in their home, I thought, as most of you did, that there was foul play. It took more than a week to find out what had really happened to claim the lives of Mr. Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arwakawa, and the truth was even more tragically sad than if they had been murdered.

My caregiver support group met the day before the news broke about how the couple had actually died. We conjectured that maybe Hackman’s wife had been struck ill and couldn’t care for herself or her elderly husband who suffered from Alzheimer’s. I looked around at my group of friends, most of whom are the primary caregivers of a spouse living with dementia, and I asked some hard questions: “What if something happened to you? Would your loved one be able to call for help? Does a friend or family member check on you regularly?”

Well, it turns out that we were right about how Gene Hackman and his wife died. Our experience of taking care of someone with dementia made us “experts” on the case.  Family caregivers know firsthand what it means to become so focused on the health and well-being of a loved one, that they don’t make time for their own health or needs. You probably won’t believe this, but 30% of family caregivers die BEFORE their care partners.

Why didn’t the Hackmans have friends or family to check up on them? The news stories tell us that the Hackmans “kept isolated” or “preferred privacy.”  That may make them sound strange or reclusive. Well, Alzheimer’s is a very sad disease. One of the first signs of dementia is social anxiety and the resulting isolation. The person suffering from dementia is aware that they are becoming forgetful, so they pull away from social situations because it’s uncomfortable for them. They don’t want to be embarrassed by forgetting someone’s name or being asked a question they can no longer answer. When they start pulling away, their spouse or care partner might become isolated by default. When you keep refusing invitations, after a while, the invitations stop coming.

The Hackman case is extremely sad, but unfortunately, it’s not unheard of. I didn’t want my friends in my caregiver support group to have to dwell on the sad reality of possibly dying alone, but before we ended our meeting that day, everyone promised to find someone to whom they could be accountable.

If you live alone, or if you live with someone who has dementia, make sure you check in with a friend or family member every day. Just send a thumbs up or a short message. There are 4 people who contact me every day, basically to let me know that they are alive. They send me a short text message, (or their results from Wordle) and I respond accordingly. If you know someone who is in this situation, ask them to be accountable to you. If Gene Hackman’s wife had just checked in with a friend every day, perhaps letting them know she was sick, she might have received the help she needed, and her husband and pets would not have been left alone, unable to provide for themselves.

Consider the investment of those few moments each day for the wellbeing of yourself and your loved ones.

Posted in Ageism, Breast Cancer,, Caretaker, Elderly, HMO, Hospice, Sickness, Widow

When is One Too Old?

Posted on by Maureen

A year ago I started asking Mom’s doctors to find out why her abdomen was getting so big. “Will you please order a scan?” I asked her oncologist at her 1 year check up after her mastectomy.

“For what purpose?” he said. “You’re not going to put her through surgery if we do find something.”

In the next several months, I asked 2 other doctors to check on her tummy. No one wanted to touch her. Finally, I got someone to listen to me, and she ordered an ultrasound. The doctor called as soon as we arrived home from having the imaging.  She told me that Mom had a “mass” the size of a football in her abdomen, and it looked “nefarious.”  Several weeks later Mom had a CT-scan and three different doctors said that a woman her age (90 years old) was definitely not a candidate for surgery. We decided to put Mom on hospice.

What would have happened if the first doctor I asked about Mom’s big tummy would have checked for a tumor a year ago? Would we have pushed for surgery? She made it through a mastectomy at the age of 88 like a champ. The tumor would have been much smaller and manageable, right? Maybe it’s a mercy that we didn’t have a diagnosis earlier. It was hard enough to get Mom’s HMO to consent to the mastectomy even though she had a very aggressive form of breast cancer. “She’s worth saving!” I cried out of frustration to a friend when I described the “hands off” attitude of all the medical personnel in Mom’s HMO. My husband and I have the same HMO. At what age do they start deciding that one’s life is not valuable? I’m 58 and Mark is 62. How much longer do we have before they start shoving a DNR form in our faces every time we go to the doctor?

Please excuse me if I sound a little cynical.

Posted in Caretaker, Elderly, Hospice, Widow

The Night the Lights Went Out in Oxnard

Posted on by Maureen

Mom’s TV is on 24/7. My husband and I are not to blame for this. It started long before we started caring for her. When you enter the house, you can hear the mind-numbing chatter from the TV, and every once in a while, you’ll hear Mom laugh or gasp or call out to the character to “Be careful!”

Several months ago, as I was just getting ready to start preparing dinner, the power went out. I went outside to see if my neighbors were also without power, only to find several utility trucks on the street. One of the workers told me that we would be without power for 5 or 6 hours! I passed the word down the block, trying not to look as panicked as I felt. I knew I could go and grab some fast food for dinner, but what was I going to do with my mother-in-law for 6 hours without TV???  I know! Let’s read! Our shelves are full of books because I’ve been a literature teacher for 35 years, and my husband has more books than most libraries. We sat together that evening and read several stories from a short story book by candlelight. It was so much fun, and I haven’t see Mom so engaged in anything in a long time. Since that night, we’ve read 14 novels. I think we’re averaging one book every 2 weeks.

We both look so forward to our reading time. When we were reading the Chronicles of Narnia, Mom would ask, “Will you take me to Narnia?” After about 2 hours of reading, I would stop, and she would sigh happily.   One day I asked, “Do you want me to turn the TV on now?” She said, “No, keep it off. I just want to stay in Narnia for a while.”

Right now we’re in our 4th book of the “Little House on the Prairie” series. Mom and I have now learned how to build log cabins, make a fireplace, plant and harvest corn, wheat, potatoes, etc. We laugh and cry with Laura and her family, and many of their adventures jog Mom’s memory about her young life. Mom’s stories have gotten fewer and fewer as her memory slips away, but I think reading is really helping sharpen her mind. Often, I will stop and ask her if she knows what a word or phrase means, and she usually does.

For years I’ve told young parents how important it is to read to their children, and now I want to encourage everyone to read to the elderly. What a difference it makes!