Understanding, believing, denying

Because of my concern about dementia awareness in India, I participate whenever I can in awareness programs, talking to people about dementia and caregiving.   The Dementia India Report 2010 says, “Awareness of dementia in India is low.” I see this as a polite understatement in a country where people usually fail to recognize dementia as a medical problem because they see the symptoms as either normal old age, or a mental problem (read: madness). Many (most?) doctors are not alert about dementia.

Awareness of anything, as I understand, needs both information and belief.

Usually, when we explain dementia, the focus is on disseminating information (and maybe case studies/ stories/ incidents), assuming that people exposed to the facts will believe them. But sometimes, even after hearing or reading about dementia, people don’t register what it is.  Information percolates only if people are willing to believe it, and many things come in the way of believing that dementia symptoms are caused by medical problems.

A sense of loss

Losing a memory is horrible; it is as if a part of oneself is lost, because ultimately, our sense of identity is an integration of all the memories and thoughts we hold close to us.

It is also horrible to find oneself wanting to remember something, and not being able to, and not having anyone who can help us fill up the gap. And I am not only talking of what a person suffering from dementia feels; we all have experienced this some time or the other. Perhaps that is why we like to have around us, for at least some of the time, people with whom we have “shared memories”.

This fact came home to me some months after my father died. I was on my evening walk, and suddenly remembered an incident of the past, but could not remember some of the details. It’s okay, I thought, I’ll go home and ask my father. Then I remembered that my father was dead.

Not Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s? Then why’s there a problem?

When my mother started facing balance problems, I had no clue what was happening, but I’d heard of Parkinson’s and that was my first suspicion. When she started facing memory loss, the only disease I knew related to that was Alzheimer’s. I didn’t know much about either Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s, but I’d heard these names, and seen articles on them. I’d made a quick mental note saying I may need to know more about these problems some day. I’d even kept some cuttings “carefully” for later; I wonder where they went

As it happens, my mother’s diagnosis was neither Parkinson’s nor Alzheimer’s. We went through multiple neurologists before I was given a documented diagnosis, and I took pains to memorize the phrases in it so that I could tell anyone who was interested the exact problem.

Care for everyone but a dementia patient…

Time to start writing about the changes I tried to make in my life to handle caregiving better. This is going to be another set of mistakes laid bare on the page, sigh, braided together with spots that worked…

But before I start examining and describing what I did,  let me step back to look at some basic premises.

A lot of people I meet say that everyone makes adjustments to take care of elders, and I think what they wonder is why talk/ write about something everyone does–surely, it could not be that different for dementia patients.

So I’ll start this phase of my blogging by describing my caregiving experience for my father, who was absolutely sharp mentally right to the end. Sharp, articulate, and very aware, even on the last day of his life.

Hurting herself without meaning to

One of the most worrisome part of the situation of my mother in those-mid-stage dementia days was how she would keep harming herself.

In the Delhi summer, with the sun shining at its hottest in a patch of the walkway in front of our apartment, my mother would dash out of the house and stand exactly at the spot where the sun lit up her scalp. (This was before I’d placed a lock on her door to prevent such outbound dashes from the apartment). Some time would pass before I checked her room and find her missing. When I would realize what had happened and rush out to fetch her back inside, she would sometimes agree easily, but need persuasion at other times. I would try explaining about heat strokes, but she would say she didn’t feel hot. “See, I don’t sweat,” she’d point out. To me her not sweating only meant the heat would hit her worse, and it did. She’d get fever, she’d shiver, she’d get incoherent.

In winter, the cold Delhi winter, she’d throw off her quilt and peel off her woollens and then sit on her bed, curled tight, till I spotted her. She would get upset if I put on the heater. Curled tight into a ball because she was cold, she would refuse to relax enough for me to slip her cardigan on. I’d have to use blankets, hot water bottles, gentle massaging of her body, to make her loosen up enough to wear her woolens back.

She doesn’t cook for me

I had started working from home before my mother’s dementia-related problems became prominent. We moved in with her after my father’s death, when none of us suspected that those tiny problems we saw could have a medical reason. She seemed normal enough, except for her growing balance problems. I would do the cooking because I wasn’t comfortable with her working in the kitchen because she could sway at any moment, and would grab whatever she saw. Sometimes one would find her on the floor, a chair fallen on top of her–ouch

I handled all the cooking with some help from my husband. Most of the time I cooked food the way my mother had cooked for me, using the same spices, cutting the veggies in the same shape and size, making dishes as close to the ones she had cooked. I did this so that she was comfortable with the food and could eat well.  Except that now my mother wanted food the way her grandmother cooked for her…

Because I worked through the day, I would finish off cooking in the morning. Daal, veggies, roties, all would be placed in hotcases, so that anyone could eat whenever he/ she wanted without my having to interrupt my work. This was something my mother herself had done for years now–finishing off the cooking early to have the day free for whatever she wanted to do.

But my mother had changed now. Her standards of “proper homes” had become more traditional, reverting to her grandmother’s days. She began complaining at this early morning dispose-off-the-cooking method, and I had to start making the rotis fresh in the afternoon, as is common in North Indian houses, because, when she was a child, she used to eating fresh rotis. I tried to get my maid to come at noon for making roties, but didn’t manage.

Murderers, thieves, and an old woman amidst them

Fear that she’ll be cheated or attacked were one common thread my mother showed, often based on things totally ordinary, or on imagined events or projections.

I remember I was once doing my strength exercises and lifting a barbell with some effort (okay, a lot of effort). As I lowered it with obvious relief, I noticed my mother at the door of the room, watching me. “Yeh kya mujhe maarne ke liye practice kar rahi ho?” she asked me. (Are you practising this to be able to hit me?). I was totally nonplussed, and could not even mutter a “No.”

Beginning to understand the reality of “memory loss”

Here are a couple of incidents that made me register the fact that my mother was facing genuine problems that were totally disorienting her and contorting her perception of reality. That her abilities had deteriorated to a point where she was unable to understand things we all assumed to be simple.

One incident was during her evening walks. I had managed to get a maid who would take my mother for a walk every evening. After a few days of trying to take her down to walk the compound’s roads, and narrowly missing falling because my mother walked in too fast and too imbalanced a way, the venue of this evening exercise was moved to the relatively safe corridor with its even floor and grab rails.

One day, the maid told me that Mataji had asked whether it was morning or evening, and not believed the maid when she said evening. Sure enough, a few minutes later, my mother called me and asked me the same question. I was in a sort of fog of disbelief as I told her it was evening. “Are you sure?” she asked. “Yes,” I replied. “How do you know?” she asked.

That was quite an unexpected problem.

Learning from our experiences…

 Over the past few days, I  have forced myself to think about the far past of my mother’s situation, when there were hints I missed, and fears she hid by blustering through and raging, and the distance and the pain. It seems such a waste in this harsh light of hindsight; why am I forcing myself to look at it?

After all, it hurts to remember those things and write them out and expose them. So why?

The answer is simple: I may be at a safe place now, in relative peace, bridges repaired, connections forged, but there are so many others who face today problems similar to what I faced then…

Hints and misses

In those early years, before my mother was diagnosed, and in the period just after, there were several small things that struck us as odd or surprisingly hurtful.

I did not piece them together into ‘dementia behavior.’ I saw in them patterns that indicated out-of-touch with contemporary life, unfair use of ‘authority’, lack of love, inconsideration, and worse. I responded by withdrawing, hurt and bewildered (what had I done to deserve this), and an occasional protest. I did make some attempts to explain and understand; often these seemed to go well, but within a few hours, my mother was back at accusing me of all sorts of motives and complaining about me to anyone and everyone. Often when I meet caregivers now, I find them going through the same phase of hurt/ bewilderment/ frustration/ helplessness. Many are angry, others are sad, but helplessness about how to cope underlies most situations.

Some problems I faced were minor irritants, some were major issues. In today’s post, I’ll share some of the minor ones, which could have been taken as hints of her condition had I been better informed:

Pattern spotting

Yesterday, I wrote: “…the most prominent mistake I made in the earlier days was force-fitting patterns instead of looking afresh at facts, and seeing intention where the cause was confusion. “

Analyzing, introspecting, recognizing patterns is an ability I’ve always tried to nurture and improve. I have assumed that these are good and important, and the best way to navigate life. Yet pattern-seeking backfired on me for the caregiving aspect of my life.

Here, for example, is one small but indicative incident (this was well before my mother was diagnosed).

My mother’s balance problems were very marked, and often, as she stood or walked, she would lurch and sway and stumble/ fall. This would happen anywhere, and she’d grab at whatever she could. Once, when she was in the kitchen, she grabbed at a knife on the kitchen counter, ouch!

Being the Wind, being the Sun

I read a story long ago of the Sun and the Wind arguing about who is more powerful.

Then they spot this man walking on a road below, wearing a cape, and decided that whichever of them could make the man take off his cape was the more powerful one. Wind took the first turn, and blew a gale hard on the man, hoping to force the cape off him. The man only drew it close around him, gripping tightly like his life depended on it. The harder the Wind tried, the tighter the man clung to his cape. Then the Sun took his turn, and shone gently on the man, and the man relaxed and took off his cape.

Of course, the story doesn’t make all that much sense if we factor in that the Wind did the only thing it could, and so did the Sun. But I always think of this story when I remember my years of caregiving for my mother.

Ignorance is not bliss…

After making yesterday’s post, memories have been flooding me. Memories of how people I knew well, good, well-respected, educated and informed, religious people would say things that could only be called cruel to my mother, because they refused to understand my mother’s ataxia and dementia, and how these affected her. People whom I repeatedly requested to change the way they talked to her, but they refused, claiming I was exaggerating things or just exercising “control” over my mother. That I was not doing enough to make my mother okay…

I could probably exhaust a month’s worth of entries over these memories, but I’ll select just a few and write of them today.

Take this elderly gentleman in our neighborhood, who was mentally sharp even though in his eighties, and he loved meeting people. He could remember everyone’s name and face and life history and hold interesting (well, almost) conversations with people. He would drop in to meet my mother sometimes. For some reason, it bugged him to see that she was not socializing with people, and stayed in the apartment all the time.

Day 2 and warming up to the blogging

Yesterday I thought I’d do a neat fit-into-boxes categorization of a month’s worth of blog entries, but I found I was too scattered in my thinking, so I’m letting my instinct take over till I get back my “blogging fingers.”

Here, for example, is one thing that bothers me…

Sometimes, when I tell others (non-caregivers) of the stress that dementia caregivers face, or of the challenges posed in looking after dementia patients, they semi-shrug and say, “Oh, we know the problems of looking after elders–doesn’t everyone! But our parents brought us up, so it is our duty.” Some even say, “You think those people have it tough because of their parents? You should see my parents! Really, my parents are the limit!”

a paradigm shift by moving beyond concepts

I mentioned yesterday that my effectiveness as a caregiver improved and my life became less stressful once I moved from a role of ‘doing things right’ to one where I became an informed and involved caregiver.

It seems obvious, in hindsight, that caregivers should understand how dementia affects a person to become effective and creative in their role.

But I experienced an even bigger shift when moved beyond book-knowledge  and allowed myself to soak the concepts at an emotional level. The real benefit came when I extended my understanding beyond the dry theory level to a place deep into the heart.