Interview with my Grandmother
[Me]“Hi Mimi, it’s Ashley! Is now an ok time?”
[Mimi] “Yes, Deborah, Claire and a friend are gone after bringing over some desert. They brought some chocolate cookies and cool whip that we layered into a cake.” [Me]“That sounds yummy!” [Mimi]“So what did you want to talk about for the interview” [Me] “Well, I have mainly been doing them informally. Mom knew what she wanted to talk about but, I can also ask you questions if you prefer.” [Mimi] “You have done some research about Alzheimer’s, yes?” [Me] “Yes” [Mimi] “Ok then…. Well, Jack (Papa’s father) had Alzheimer’s back in the day. Then it was different, they hadn’t studied it very much. Anyway, Lottie would tell me that it was getting worse but she couldn’t pin point exactly what was happening so we had them stay with us some. This was 30-35 years ago when we lived in Nina. I think the most obvious thing was that we would go visit Tom at Montréal- at the time he was the schedule director- and after we got back Daddy would say, ‘when are we going to see Tom?’ and he just wouldn’t remember we had just seen him. So they came to Wisconsin and stayed with us. Jack wouldn’t remember what he had done during the day but he really liked to be busy. I would have him scrape the finish off of old oak tables– at the time it was a really big thing to scrape the finish off a table and then have it refinished. Well, Jack could do a table in three or four days so I would beg people for furniture for him to fix. Then, he started waking up in the middle of the night and saying that he was going to work. Then, I was teaching and papa had a job with the church so we couldn’t be waking up in the middle of the night. So we started looking into homes. There was one home in GA that was for people with Alzheimer’s so we considered putting him there. He started to get rowdier though. Like one night, we were walking with him and he got it in his head that he was going to go to Chattanooga where he had grown up. He turned to us and said if we didn’t take him right then and there he would jump in front of the next car to drive by. After that we sent him to the hospital. They locked him in a room, and he ripped the toilet off the wall. We where afraid they would charge us for the toilet but they didn’t. The hospital gave him some medication to calm him down – you know people with Alzheimer’s often get rowdy and aggressive. Deborah- who was at Agnes Scott at the time- met mom and dad at the airport and flew them to the retirement home in Georgia. There grandmother had her own apartment and Grandpa was locked up in his own room. You know once you get there they like to take you off your medication and re-evaluate to make sure they have you on the right medications. Well, when they took him off his medication he ripped some more stuff off the walls so they decided to put him back on it. Once he settled in though it was good. Alice would save some of her desert from lunch and Jack would come over in the afternoon for tea and desert and they would visit. After a little while he would say, ok it is time for me to be going and they would take him back to his room. But now on to papa’s Alzheimer’s. The first time he really had trouble was in Cincinnati. We where at a conference and he just really couldn’t keep the days separate. I ended up helping him with the schedule. Also, you know something weird about Alzheimer’s is you usually keep the ability to drive for a while. I would have to give him directions- oh Lottie’s two sisters also had Alzheimer’s but neither of them was rowdy or aggressive. Sometimes people with Alzheimer’s will wander all over the place to but Herb was never really into walking so we didn’t have that problem with him.” [Laughter] [Me] “Yes, that never seemed to be an issue.” [Mimi] “I guess when it was happening to Herb’s parents we weren’t really thinking, ‘oh, this could very well be what it is like for us’ but it was. It looked like Alzheimer’s a while before he was diagnosed. We started going to this place called the Roanoke Center for Healthy Aging. They helped with social services and stuff- frankly they don’t really know anything about Alzheimer’s and some of the drugs probably plateau his Alzheimer’s. Some people say that the drugs will prolong the effects of Alzheimer’s to no advantage. Your parents thought that if Emory didn’t have any better advice then there probably wasn’t much more out there at the time, so we took him to Wesley Woods, but they didn’t really suggest many changes so it was probably the best at the time. Anyway, for a while papa really drove well. He would drive himself to Rotary meetings and to get his hair cut. We got cell phones with two different numbers so that if he got lost we could call each other and that seemed to be enough for a while. And before he was diagnosed, he would sometimes drop us (Mimi, Deborah, Susan, and whomever else is in the car) off but he kept forgetting where he would park so we quit doing that. Also for a while I would go to the Presbyterian Church service and he would go to the Methodist church because the sermon was really interesting but he started forgetting where he parked so that stopped. Also, one time he was driving to rotary and actually went to the old clubhouse. He called me and said that no one was there and he must have gotten the information wrong. I drove out to him and then he followed me home. After that, we wouldn’t let him drive alone. Andrea thought the Prius was the ultimate solution for that. The worst was the night he drove away to the hotel [VISA to the rescue]. After that we wanted to revoke his license but his doctor for whatever reason wouldn’t sign the paperwork saying that he shouldn’t drive. We finally got highway patrol- they helped find him at the hotel- to write a note. After that he was usually |
pretty good about not driving. He would thank people for giving him rides and what not but one time he finally realized that I was never letting him drive and he threatened to divorce me to which I responded ‘you mean I can leave you and not deal with this guilt free?’
Once I found him sitting in the neighbor’s car. Oh and one time he tried to park his car somewhere funny so I wouldn’t find it. He parked on the farm right near our old house. The woman who owned the land asked him what he was doing and he said, ‘I am hiding my car from my wife.’ She drove him home and then told me what had happened, but he didn’t remember where he had parked so we were lucky she was so nice and knew who he was. You know there are only 4 places in Virginia where you can get re-evaluated for a license. One of those places happens to be not too far away, and for $250 they will give the evaluation. If you are deemed unfit to drive you only have to pay half of the fee but it still was a fair amount of money. Anyway I took Papa to get tested and they start by talking to you and if you do well enough then you can drive. Well they took him out on the road and I was so nervous. However, when they returned they told him that until his memory problems improved he shouldn’t drive. He knew he had some memory problems at this point. For a while he just would sit and stare at the piece of paper and then one day he said, ‘I guess we should sell my car.’ Also to help take care of him, I paid some neighbors who were in need of money to come and watch him and do some small things around the house. He thought they were doing stuff for me to make money, so he never realized that they were there to watch him. One of the hardest parts was that he really had no understanding as to the purpose of a place. For instance, we would get to church and he really just wouldn’t have a clue why we where there. Also, when it was time to go he would often just sit and stare off into space. I would say, ‘look Herb everyone is leaving, we should be going to,’ but he would just stay sitting. Eventually he had a stroke and we were offered hospice. He qualified for hospice but after a week he had practically regained all his functions so I was worried we would loose it. However, the hospice people know that usually once you have a stroke you will have more, so they kept coming. They would help bathe him and administer medication. He even got a weekly massage! I thought that the caretaker should get one too, but that was not the case. Sometimes he would get this grimace and his blood pressure would go through the roof. In the beginning they thought their tools weren’t working but it turned out he was having strokes. To help with the pain, the nurses brought morphine. Not long after that, he died in his sleep. It was very peaceful and not lingering.” [Me] “What was the worst part of Alzheimer’s as a caretaker?” [Mimi] “People with Alzheimer’s get what they call the 5’o’clock effect. After 5pm Papa would just become restless and be ready to go home. He really didn’t have a sense of home or belonging anywhere and at night it was really disconcerting for him. I would show him pictures of us and our family in the house but he just really was never at home anywhere. In most regards I got pretty lucky. You know I have been on the elder committee at the church for a while and for that I had been given some information about Alzheimer’s disease. I also spent a fair amount of time researching Alzheimer’s and I heard lots of stories in which the person with Alzheimer’s would become really violent, or rude. I got lucky in that regard. Papa was nice, never violent, and didn’t wander. I remember this one woman, her husband had early-onset Alzheimer’s- she wrote a book about it- and he was really combative. In fact he was so combative she had a really difficult time finding a facility to take care of him. Oh, and Uncle Cole’s wife was in a home, but there they wouldn’t let him stay with her so he found another facility that would let them stay together.” [Me] “Ok, do you have anything to add?” [Mimi] “I think that’s all, do you have enough?” [Me] “Yes, thank you Mimi! Love you” [Mimi] “Love you too sweetie! Bye.” [Me] “Bye.” |