My first real experience with senile dementia was with my own mother. I had almost died that year of a heart virus at age 50 and that likely was hard for my mother to deal with that as well. I found out I was likely going to live a normal long lifespan after 8 months of believing I might die.
This was in May when doctors told me I was well finally. So, I decided to plan a trip for my mother (then around 80) to visit where her parents had grown up in Scotland. So, we booked tickets for my mother, my 10 year old daughter and myself to Edinburgh via London and San Francisco over the polar route which takes about 11 hours to London if I remember correctly. My mother seemed more problematic than my 10 year old on the flight over so I was very surprised by this occurrence. It was a harbinger of things to come I'm afraid. She was sort of okay in Scotland and England but more ornery than she used to be. I thought "Well. She might be doing okay traveling for someone 80 years old." This was my thought at the time.
However, after a week in London and Edinburgh and renting a car and driving up to Aviemore and as far as the Loch Ness area (northern Scotland) she seemed okay with the trip and I was glad to be out in the country in mountains and riding the then ski lift there in 1999. But, then we flew to Munich Germany and it got very very difficult with my mother the rest of the trip. There is something called "TRansfer Trauma" where someone is "out of their element" or someplace they cannot deal with which in this case was Germany for my mother because the German Army during World War II had machined gunned her 18 year old friend in two at the "Battle of the Bulge". Then getting off the plane stewardesses "English and German" were yelling at each other in German. Since I don't speak German I have no idea what that was all about. But, my mother was fairly well freaked out about everything. So, when I rented our 6 passenger motor home in Munich, she never got out of that motor home (she refused) through Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy and all the way back through most of those countries until we got off the motor home for flying to London for a week before we flew home to San Francisco. At the time I was angry at my mother for making this trip 5 or 10 times more difficult than I intended for it to be for me and for everyone else. I picked my son and his friend up in Munich and we all (My mother and 10 year old daughter and I and my son and his friend (both about 25 years old then) (His friend had just gotten his degree in physics at UCSC and so was celebrating by going to Europe.)
When we returned home I was still pretty angry at my mother for making this (my first trip ever to Euopre more difficult than it needed to be for me and for the others as well.
But, I still didn't know about "Transfer Trauma" or that I was dealing with early senile dementia.
But, when my mother back in the San Francisco area was driving with me for a walk down the coast at a nice hiking trail along the beach, all of a sudden she started yelling "I want the words". In other words she wanted to sing along with songs she didn't know and hadn't heard before that I was listening to. This is the first moment I really knew something was seriously wrong.
Within 6 months of this I had to institutionalize my mother because she had almost burned her home down. We told her not to cook anything except in the microwave because we knew she was slipping.
But, she didn't listen to us and turned the burner on the stove on and then set tupperware on the burner and then prayed for the fire not to spread as it streamed down the liquid plastic to the floor.
At this point we all realized that my mother was a danger to herself and others at this point and could no longer live alone. And then my wife said, "I'm not willing to have her burn down my home either so she's not living here."
This was the most difficult moment in my life and even more difficult than taking away my father's rifles and pistol when he was shooting people in the wall he saw and I was worried he would shoot my mom when she brought him food. So, I snuck all his guns away so he wouldn't accidentally shoot my Mom while he was on Codeine medicine which at that strength makes you hallucinate.
But, this was worse because institutionalizing my Mother was never going to be okay with me. But for liability reasons I saw no useful alternative with the present legal structure within the United States.
So, maybe you can better understand now how dangerous Trump is becoming every single day now.
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