Tuesday, August 17, 2010
“Only in your dreams” can take on an ominous tone in relation to Alzheimer’s disease if your dreams become violent and you find that you’re acting them out. Mayo Clinic researchers have identified a rare sleep disorder that results in violent dreams has been...
My certain ignorance with respect to specifics within the medical field prompts me to place this comment as perhaps a 'related add on' to your great article.
The man my Mom married over twenty years ago could well have been the reason the Women's Lib Movement was started. He, of course, was reared in what is commonly known as the 'Old School' wherein the men brought home the bacon and the women were pretty much servatude to the demands of the male. Because my Mom was similarly reared, that outlook on life seemed to work well for the both of them during most of their marriage.
Unfortunately, as my Mom developed and went more deeply into the phases of Alzheimer's Disease, her husband couldn't cope with her 'abandonment' of him and their lifestyle. He simply could not get it through his head that her relationship with the disease was not her doing, nor her way of 'escaping her duties'. (Certainly, more in depth than that, but for time and space...)
One such duty was to sit next to him and hold his hand while he watched TV. (And unfortunately, that's all he ever did.) His prior working life consisted of the military police, security guard, etc, along those lines. Thus, he would always watch cops, et al, on TV.
My Mom would dutifully sit there and take it all in. Often though, she'd awaken during the night in a frantic state of mind trying to 'save' the man, woman or child from the bad guys, fire, car wreck, etc. she'd at some earlier point seen on TV. Sometimes it took a couple of hours to calm her down and get her back to sleep.
I include this along with your article to advise any mate, child or caregiver that though short term memory becomes more and more vacant as the disease progresses, surely short term scenes embracing a high emotional impact are for at least a while longer, retained.
I encourage you to love your Alzheimer's Victim enough to as much as is possible refrain from allowing negative emotional content to enter his or her mind. An Alzheimer's Victim already has enough to deal with.
Thank you...
V
I think I'm already half-way mentally to where my Mom is...
I trust when I wrote along the lines, 'I hope you will be better than my Step Dad', all readers recognize the 'you' meant that all readers in general might consider that aspect of Care Giving... not 'you', meaning anyone in particular.
I'm very sorry
V