In all the time that I have spent with my grandmother these past two weeks I have learned so many new things just by simply watching her… witnessing her actions… listening to her words… and storing all of these memories and ideas into my mind for future reference…. After the Neurologist told me on Wednesday that her brain function has slowed down drastically to a Level 5 (versus a Levels 9-12 for normal brain function), I realized that this “slowing” explained a LOT of why she is doing was she does now. At first, it made me really sad and sorrowful for her and I would wish that I could make it all better for her. But, the truth is there is no going back now… there is no way to reverse the effects of brain shrinkage, slowing, or damage…. It only gets worse as time goes on… So instead I dwelled on the simple everyday things that she no longer remembers any more… the day-to-day activities that we do each and every day without a thought in the world about them… how we just “do” them and never, ever think about “doing” them… Or how no one ever thinks about “what if” I could not “do” these things for myself any more again? Well, that is what she is up against now… now that she is back in her home and out of the hospital and trying to get her life back to the routine she was in before she left for the ER on March 1… Yet, she is home and there are still these daily activities that are so precious to you and me but to her she has now forgotten how to do them.
A few examples that she has lost the ability to do: Button or unbutton clothes, tie her shoe laces, use dining utensils, wipe, dial, answer or hang up phone, make a bed, fold clothes, operate a sink, flush a toilet, read a clock, read or write, use a zipper, forget where your pockets are, put toothpaste on toothbrush, etc.
As normal brain functioning humans, you and I do these simple activities day-in and day-out and never once stop and think about how fortunate we are to be able to perform these tasks with no problem whatsoever. Yet, for her the function to remember to do it is gone and the function to know how to do is gone as well. It breaks my heart each time she would get ready to do a simple task as going to the bathroom and would be sitting on the toilet and would ask me what to do next once she finished “going” in the bowl. You see the brain current that tells her to wipe next is simply not there anymore. And then sometimes she won’t remember to pull up her underwear before her pants or to flush the commode when she is finished or even where the commode handle is to flush the commode. Another example is that when she stands in front of the sink to wash her hands, she stares at the sink because she cannot remember how to turn the faucet on…. Sometimes in the middle of the night she will wake up having to go the bathroom and she just sits up in the bed and stares out into the night because she will not remember where the bathroom is… the list just goes on and on. I guess I never realized how bad she was even when the Neurologist told me that she is now categorized as “Stage 3 Dementia”… I got a reality check of it though when I stayed with her in her home for 3 days this week. My grandmother is not the same person she was before she was hospitalized. I still do not know for sure what happened to her during her hospital stay from March 1 to March 12. All I do know is that she forgot all about her home, her stuff, every body but her immediate family (just 4 of us), etc. Those things that she was so uptight and passionate about before are not even a faint memory to her now… she has not even asked about her jewelry, her house, her bills, nothing. In a way, her situation frightens me to some degree but in other ways it is somewhat calming to me. This past two weeks have in a way molded me into understanding that she is alright now and when her time comes it will be alright too.
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