I've volunteered with the elderly for thirty-five years but am stumped
in regard to the behavior of an independent 80-something friend. Maybe
someone here can give me some feedback.
This woman has experienced far too much loss in too short a period of
time. Within the past year, her husband of nearly sixty years entered
a nursing home with advanced Alzheimers, after a police stand-off in
which he threatened someone with shattered glass in the lobby of the
apartment complex where they were highly-respected residents (not to
mention community leaders in the broader community). She was told she
had stomach cancer and underwent radiation that made her waste away (I
infer from her conversation that the diagnosis may have been wrong and
that the real problem may have been something as benign as an ovarian
cyst).
She has two grown sons that mimic the Prodigal Son relation****p: one
charming eldest who lives in another state and won't even visit the
father, now that the former community leader is stricken. The second
son is scrupulously dutiful but emotionally distant. Nevertheless, if
it weren't for this second, close-to-home son, I don't see how my
friend could possibly remain living independently.
During a home visit yesterday, and in phone conversations that
prompted sufficient concern and travel to make the home visit, she
spoke of her apartment being infested with a "long red hairy...THING."
I initially called it a mouse, although having lived in the same
complex at one time, I know for a fact the place is notoriously free
of pests (having first-hand experience of the quantity of chemicals
the place uses to control them).
What scared me yesterday was, during our visit, her correcting me when
I called the pest a "mouse." "Oh, no no," she said, "it was yay-
long" (and she indicated at least a foot). "It's red, and hairy, and
has a head like, you know, one of those dogs." While I said nothing,
she added, "My son tells me I'm imagining things."
I said not to judge herself too harshly and that given the proximity
of her apartment to the rubbish shute, it's possible she has indeed
been visited by a creature she went on to like to a "dachsund."
But then I asked her why she wasn't watching television, her mainstay.
She said "Oh, that awful music they play drives you crazy." To which I
answered that I couldn't agree more. It may be signficant that the
last time I was in her apartment, pinning slacks to hem for her, a
soap opera she watches featured the entire, and I do mean entire, song
"I Kissed a Girl and I Liked It." (I asked her politely if we could
change the station because it embarrassed me listening to this in
front of her. She is so ladylike and reserved, and she immediately
agreed...not that I would have pressed the point if she said she was
enjoying it.)
I agreed that music and amplified acoustics in general are becoming
too much a distraction in our society, etc., etc., but at that point
started to wonder if she's in need of an evaluation. And here I come
to the source of greatest concern:
I know the apartment manager well. I know the apartment staff well. I
get along with all of them so well that if I were to re****t the basics
of this visit, the apartment social worker would be up at the unit so
fast that there's no question a psych eval would result. The reason
I'm posting here at all is because of the fact that my friend's two
sons each have their approach/avoid behaviors in regard to their
parents: while the younger son is dutiful, he is dutiful in a "I
fulfill my obligations very very conscientiously; don't ask me to get
involved any further" way.
I empathize and sympathize with this son 100 percent, having been in a
situation with an intractable and ultimately impossible parent-in-
decline. I know how stubborn *naturally aging* people can be and
expect to be one myself. I left my friend telling myself that it's
possible that a woman who was alert, oriented to time and space,
capable of carrying on and listening to an hour-long conversation, is
not in need of intervention.
So: When dealing with an elderly person whose lifelong habits of
personality responsibility, kindness, compassion, community
involvement come cra****ng into Alzheimers (via their mate), do you
utilize different criteria in *****sing the possibility they too are
developing the disease? There used to be a diagnosis called Benign
Forgetfulness of the Aged, and as I said above, this poor soul has had
so much bad happen to her, in such a short time, at such an advanced
age, that it would drive a person forty years young off the cliff.
Thank you very much for reading this and offering any responses you
can.
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