Cancer-bits: Part II

Cancer sucks...Part II

I think you can all imagine how terrible it was to make my Mom give up her keys and stop driving. She was angry (internally mostly) at me for many many months. But she rarely showed it because she trusts me. She knows I would NEVER make her do anything unless it was for her own good and people around her. The day it happened finally was so sad. Mom was trying to get to a friend's house in a city about 25 minutes away. She was on her cell phone with her friend because she wasn't able to follow the step-by-step instructions that I had typed out for her. She put the cell phone down because she thought that friend was in the car with her, in the backseat. But when she went for more directions she couldn't hear her friend any longer and, my Mom thought, she had disappeared from the backseat! She was driving around trying to figure out where her friend had gone, thinking she would catch glimpses of her and then she would vanish again.

Now I must admit I had already been sure that Mom was heading toward losing her ability to drive. She had gotten lost a few times in our area and I had been able to talk her back home. So Mom called me, very frightened, and I was able to get her to her friend's house. But I didn't yet know about what had actually occurred in the minutes before. When she was on her way home I again directed her using Mapquest as a guide whenever she could spot street signs. I knew, without knowing the details, that it was time to have a talk.

Later that day I showed up at her condo and we sat down to talk about it. She told me what had happened and how scary it had been. We were both on the verge of tears and when I told her I'd be taking her car keys home with me that day she didn't argue. The anger about the car came shortly after but I was expecting it.

After that day she got dramatically worse. She fell many times and was scared and frustrated every day. One particular example will be with me now and forever.

I called her and asked if she wanted to come over for awhile or go out and so something together. She was very angry. "I can't leave now! Ma is sitting here and I can't leave her alone!" She was sure she had my grandmother next to her in the kitchen (she had passed away in 1999) and she was so angry that I had even suggested we leave her alone. Mom saw lots of people in the condo and had been doing so at night for months. But until this she was able to get through the day-time hours without many visits. Now that had changed. She was seeing the "shadowman" all day long.

The Shadowman was a representation of my Dad. She knew it was him but she couldn't see his face and he wouldn't talk to her. He scared her.

At this point her symptoms were so pronounced that she was unable to pass a test at her Doctor's office. The test is described by WebMD as:

Mini-Mental State ExaminationThis is a very brief test that the doctor can use to test a person's problem solving skills, attention span, counting skills and memory. It will give the doctor insight into whether there has been damage to different areas of the brain.

Mayoclinic.com describes it this way:

Mental status evaluation. These tests screen memory, problem-solving abilities, attention spans, counting skills and language. They help doctors pinpoint specific problems a person may have with cognition. For instance, doctors might test recent and long-term memory by asking: What day is it today? Or: When was World War II? Recall tests are another example. Doctors may list familiar objects, and then ask a person to repeat them immediately, and again five minutes later.

The two things that Mom had the hardest time with was math (counting down by 7's from 100) and copying a shape that was on a piece of paper. Couldn't do either, although I know lots of people in their 40's who might not be able to do that counting thing. Ya know what I mean?

Mom was finally sent to Geriatrics for some assistance. OMG...the woman was incensed when she saw we were taking her to an "old people doctor". She actually looked around to make sure no one saw her go into that part of the building. Yeah...this was going to be fun. But after that appointment we knew what we were up against...dementia. But not exactly what we thought since I was sure it was Alzheimer's.

Lewy Body Dementia. It is the second most common dementia, Alzheimer's is #1. But most people don't know anything about LBD. If you're ever interested, check out this site: http://www.lewybodydementia.org/