Alzehimers is a very scary disease that my grandma got diagnosed with at a very young age. She was healthy up until the day Alzheimer’s disease took hold of her. My grandma was always a fun spirited, smart and well mannered person. She loved life and spent most of her time with family and friends. She married my grandpa and raised five children. She was a brilliant woman who did all the accounting tasks for their family business and personal life. In the early 1990’s one of my grandma’s daughters was having a baby. She lived an hour away from her mom where my grandma visited over a dozen times. My grandma went to help and be there as one of her many grandchildren entered the world. However, she never made it that day, she had gotten lost on her way. Looking back at what happened, that was the first clear sign that she wasn’t herself. The family didn’t realize how painful my grandma’s Alzheimer’s would be. She went through all the clinical stages including the mild cognitive impairment stage which lasted seven years, the mild Alzheimer’s stage which lasted two years, the moderate Alzheimer’s stage which lasted two years as well and finally the severe Alzheimer’s stage which lasted three years until my grandma lost all functioning ability. The disease begins in the medial temporal lobe and spreads to the occipital lobe which inhibits about every sensory function my grandma had.
My grandma would watch TV and think movies were real life. She would look out windows and imagine every single car was there to see her. She would often accuse her family of doing malicious things. In the year 1997, my grandma walked away from her home of fifty plus years and found herself inside her childhood home. She had made her way across town and entered her childhood home thinking it was her real home. She was greeted by the current resident who thankfully recognized my grandma from town and brought her back home to her family. Alzheimer’s had shown through my grandma how horrifying and debilitating it can be. The disease continued to disable my grandma as the days progressed. Cursing, swearing and aggression were not the usual behavior of my grandma but she began to exhibit these behaviors. She would go to bed twelve times a night, getting up and down, turning the lights on, off and on again. She would dress in her winter coat to go to bed and wear her pajamas outside. She was a prisoner in her own home as doors and windows needed to be secured so she couldn’t open them. As she progressed deeper into the grip of Alzheimer’s, my grandpa couldn’t take care of her anymore. Although it broke his heart, he had to get her into a facility where not only could they care for her professionally but he could regain his own health as well. My grandpa was fortunate to find a facility in his hometown where he could visit his wife everyday including the days when she did not know who he was or his intention. I am told all the time about my grandma, and when I met her for the first time. I was only ten months old and unable to speak and my grandma was seventy seven with Alzheimer’s, unable to speak.
After many years of forgetfulness, uncertainties and general isolation, my grandma succumbed to her disease at the young age of seventy seven. Her immediate family felt as though she wasn’t the only one that went through the stages of Alzheimer’s, for they did too. She had little recollection of her disease as it slowly but steadily took away her beauty, grace and dignity. Alzheimer’s is a cruel, unjust disease not only affecting the patient but also affecting the family surrounding the disease.