VASCULAR DEMENTIA IN THE ELDERLY: LIB'S LAW PRECEDED KATIE'S LAW

This is just a short post about how our mother stopped driving.  It is one of the lighter things that happened and about which we can always laugh.  I know most families will face this if they have an elderly parent, and in social work in the past,  I have dealt with many families who had to prevent their parents from driving when it became hazardous. 

My mother has always been independent and stubborn in matters related to what she will and will not do in regard to healthcare, staying in her home, doing what she wants in the pasture, around the cows, etc. 

In other matters, she wasn't stubborn, always being so easy to please in regard to where she wanted to go, what she wanted to do.  Very easy to be with and always cooperative, not having to have her way. 

But her independent spirit was strong, her will strong and when one has been the child, it is hard to become the parent, as we, and many of you, have found out.

So of course we dreaded having to stop her from driving.  But she self-monitored on many issues.  And driving happened to be one of them.  As noted before, we noticed that her car would be dead on almost every visit, and these were weekly, so we knew she wasn't driving very much.  One day she announced that she didn't drive her car very much, so she wanted to sell it.  We thought it was a good idea and one less thing to worry about, so the car was sold.

She had several friends older than she was, and both of them still drove.  She was 86 at this time, I believe.  They would occasionally come to visit her and sit on the front porch, sipping iced tea and discussing how the world had changed.  Mother somehow focused a lot of effort  during these visits and was able to stay in these conversations.

The bigger problem got to be that she could convince others of things that were not true, so earnest and forceful was she in her speech.

"My kids made me sell my car," she told a longtime friend, age 88, one day in our hearing.  "You know you can't drive in Texas after you're 83.  You're going to  have to stop driving.   If they catch you, you'll get a ticket."

He seemed confounded by the information, but she insisted that it was true.  She continued in this vein , but changed the age because she couldn't remember what exactly her "law" stated.  We called it Lib's Law, so it was pretty poignant when a real Katie's Law was passed to govern the elderly continuing to drive.  She may have had dementia, but that didn't keep her from being prescient.

Installed