I’ve only got time to do a quick posting because I’m waiting for the other half to get out of the bathroom so we can whizz off to visit my mother. It’s a surprise visit, a thing I try to do regularly because I’m so aware she is putting on a show for me when I’m expected.
Staying there for a couple of nights is good indicator. I’ve watched her answering the phone to friends, sounding bright and breezy and full of beans and then collapsing in a heap when she hangs up, so it’s a good bet she’s doing the same to me. So, in case more help is needed and in order to be able to report a true picture of the situation at our next hospital visit, a surprise visit is a good idea.
In the course of all the upset surrounding the forms that had to be filled in for the brain donation my mother complained several times about the name of her disease. I agree with her; ‘dementia’ now carries such pejorative overtones it’s as bad as calling someone a leper in the middle ages. Leprosy still exists but we are considerably more knowledgeable about the condition than we were, though it still needs someone like princess Diana to shake hands with lepers to make us sit up and take notice. There very desperately needs to be high profile publicity round all forms of dementia. We could do with a real celebrity talking to a demented person in a cheerful way, preferably not in a home or a hospital, in the presence of a number of TV cameras.
At this stage of her disease and with the help of the live-in carers, my mother is now balanced. It is in the nature of vascular dementia that long plateau periods can be followed by catastrophic downward plunges, so the balance will not last. While it does she is lucid for much of the day and, apart from the memory lapses, sounding as good as you or me. She is able to enjoy the garden, a short walk, a good meal, a television programme. She tires easily and is going to bed at nine most nights. Putting the label ‘demented’ on such a person is insulting.
The downward plunges are occasioned by locations or situations which she cannot understand or which are new or challenging. Undoubtedly keeping her in her own home and familiar surroundings is helping the balance, as is, literally, the presence of the carers who hide out in their room a lot of the time but appear like magic if my mother starts moving around. It is possible to get room sensors to detect movement in the house and we did consider them but the carers have developed a sixth sense, a familiarity with the routine and hearing like bats, which is not always easy with the television turned up to blasting quarry level.
The balance centres of the brain are affected by the loss of blood flow as the tiny vessels in the brain are blocked by all the junk lining the arteries. In the case of my mother she has been making up for the tiny butter ration she had in the war, ever since. Having endured two ounces of butter a week for six years she has been compensating herself with half a pound of butter a week at least for the next fifty-seven years and sitting in a chair doing as little as possible. It is this which is lining her arteries in plaques that could break off and go sailing along until they stick in the dwindling end of an artery in the brain or lung or heart. When this happens, as it has been happening in a small way regularly for some time, the blood flow is erratic and the brain, heart or lung, deprived of oxygen or nutrients, dies a little and the function of the body in that area is compromised. That the brain is a highly adaptive organ is undeniably demonstrated by the fact that she keeps on keeping on despite having not much of brain function to work with.
The human body is amazing and the human brain one of the wonders of the planet. Nevertheless, death by butter is a strange choice. It makes me consider the proposition that being rich enough to afford half a pound of butter a week and do nothing but sit in a chair is not such a blessing after all. We evolved to move, to walk, to work and to go hungry quite often.
When the current situation is ended, I intend to go back to doing all those things on a regular basis.
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JaneLaverick.com – thinking all the time