It's a sad fact of life that as you get older things start going wrong with our bodies, and not to mention our minds. I am talking specifically about dementia. I have had experience of dementia as my Grandfather developed it when he was around eighty five years old. He was such a character my Grandfather, he was very energetic, full of life and very independent. Everybody around town knew him, or knew of him. He had a great sense of humour and was very comical, he loved people, and he adored animals, he could often be seen around town with a crowd of pigeons around him, even on his head! Of course he wasn't Dr Doolittle, he did have a bag of corn with him. The dementia started gradually with him finding it hard to remember things, we all put that down to "getting old" ? but it got worse and he used to get frustrated that his brain wasn't working. The frustration would lead to anger, and sometimes he would get very argumentative with my Grandma, which was very out of character. He forgot people's names, but would beam with recognition when he saw our faces. We finally realised that something was very wrong when my Grandfather went out one day, as he did everyday, but didn't come back for a very long time. We went out looking for him, and even called the police. He was finally brought home by a neighbor that had found him wandering around the town, he had told them that he didn't know his way home. This had really knocked my Grandfathers confidence, and it happened once more after that, so from then on he was not allowed out on his own, and needed watching twenty four/seven as he would take any opportunity to try and escape! As time went on, his illness got worse, he would put things away in wrong places, he would hide things as he developed paranoia that someone was out to get him, he would wet and occasionally mess himself. He would sit in a world of his own just staring into space. Sometimes when he was feeling anxious he would cut up newspapers or tissues and stuff them places. He became very amorous, and lost his inhibitions, he would openly chase woman around the room trying to cuddle them, and when he did get to cuddle the woman, more often than not it would result in him getting an erection. As you can imagine, it would have been very easy to get very cross with him. He did have some medication, and it helped to slow the process down, he also had some medicine for his amorousness, which was a great relief! He also took sleeping tablets as he was quite prone to waking up in the night and going for a wander, not just around the house either. To give my Grandma some respite during the week, my Grandfather was taken off to a day center twice a week to mix with some other elderly people with various conditions. When he came back he was always quite uptight and anxious and it took him a long time to settle down. It seemed that he just needed to stay in familiar surroundings and the same routine to keep things running smoothly. When he came home from the day center we would ask him what he had got up to, he didn't have a clue. Sometimes he would tell us that he had been working on a building site, and genuinely believed that he had, so we just humored him. The funny thing is, if you asked him anything about what happened twenty years ago, he could tell you in great detail. My Grandma was so tired from looking after him, but she wouldn't put him into a care home, and very sadly she passed away, from sheer exhaustion I believe. My Grandfather had to go into a care home, where he deteriorated quite rapidly, he pined after my Grandma. He met a lady in the care home who had Alzheimer's disease, it was quite sweet as she called him by her late husbands name, and he used to call her by my Grandmas name, I think it gave them both some comfort. Eventually my Grandfather deteriorated so much that he had to be aided to do absolutely everything, bath, toilet, feed, walk etc, he lost so much weight and became frail. He would just sit and stare into space, or dig and scratch at the patterns on the tablecloth. He contracted a bladder infection and had to go to hospital, where he finally passed away about a month later. Right up until the very end his face would still beam with recognition when he saw any of his family walk into a room, and he also managed to charm the nurses while he was there. |
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