VASCULAR DEMENTIA IN THE ELDERLY: MORE SIGNS THAT YOU MAY BE DEALING WITH DEMENTIA

This is the second in a series of six dealing with the symptoms that may signal the start of the process known as dementia.  The symptoms are taken from the Johns Hopkins free Guide to Understanding Dementia, and will be taken in parts and related to personal events experienced by the family of Lib, who is the subject of this blog.  All symptoms taken from The Guide will be italicized for clarity of origin.

                          HANDLING COMPLEX TASKS

has trouble with previously familiar activities, like balancing a checkbook, cooking a meal, or other tasks that require a complex train of thought.


Our mother was a bookkeeper by profession.  She loved keeping orderly books for a large highway construction company and did this for twenty-two years.  Prior to that, she kept books for the gins our parents operated.  Not only did she keep books as her vocation, but she seemed to enjoy it as an avocation too.  She kept meticulous books of all personal expenditures and her small cattle operation.   She was active in other ways, but spent a good deal of time inputting all information by hand, using a small adding machine, a ledger, and a pencil to perfect results.   Finding a penny error could consume a day at work, and she couldn't understand a child of hers who could never balance a checkbook. 

The change we noted was subtle at first.  But she must have noticed it before we were aware of it as she asked her youngest daughter, who also kept books for their business, to take over her taxes, and later, her checkbook.  During the investigative phase by her daughter, magazine subscriptions  were found to have been  paid over and over, five or six years in advance, because they kept sending  bills. 

Fortunately, because her financial health was so important to her, she let go of that control sooner than she did in other areas.  Her daughter Jan would go to the house and pay her bills, work on taxes and get her to sign checks.  That was in the early phases.

Eventually she could not even sign her name.

The other more baffling symptom was in the area of food preparation.  My sisters had come for a visit once to find her panting on the couch, fanning her face.  She had just put out a grease fire in a skillet on the gas stove.  The phone distracted her, and she simply forgot she was cooking. 

We had noted that she had begun to leave her foodstuffs out on the counter, but mistakenly thought it was just too much trouble to put it all up.  The truth was that it took too much effort to find it. 

We engaged a friend to bring meals about two to three times a week at this point, and my sister paid her.  However, mother thought she was doing too much, not knowing that she was being paid, and we couldn't tell her because she wouldn't think it was necessary for meals to be brought to her.  So that help eventually had to be discontinued.

Thus began weekly trips by my sisters and brothers-in-law to buy groceries and take food.they had prepared.  As often as I could, I would go and cook a lot of food and freeze it for her to eat.  She could still at that time barely manage the microwave.  Never having been technologically savvy, it was difficult to maintain that ability as her symptoms progressed.

We were still in the early phases of the dementia, in approximately years 3 and 4.  She was, unbelievably, still driving and still managing in many areas, but the damage was beginning to be apparent.  We saw her life change,  watched the slow melting of the candle, and hoped we'd  realize when the hot wax spilled out,  and we had to act. quickly.


DEMENTIA HINT:  Labeling cabinets might help at this stage. 
                                 Writing out directions for using coffee pot, microwave, etc. helped.
                                  Contact your local Meals on Wheels and/or local meal service  which are  sometimes operated in your community

*Let me make one note.  We were trying to honor our mother's wishes to stay in her own home.  I want to be clear in this.  She was extremely independent and was in one sense difficult to help because in her estimation she needed no help.

Families who have a parent who reasonably makes a plan to go into assisted living or independent living before they become so mentally and/or physically disabled are fortunate.  This blog will probably make more sense to families who are walking a tightrope with an extremely strong and independent parent.