A
female
age
41-50,
anonymous
writes:I know it's futile to worry this far into the future, but I can not stop. I visit on occasion, my grandmother (age mid eighties), who has alzheimer's disease. She was especially tired this evening, and extremely confused--more than she usually is in the daytime, and more than she usually is in general. it seemed her short term memory only lasted for about two to three seconds this evening. She'd ask a semi-coherent question, then get upset that someone was answering a question she'd just asked, because she'd already forgotten the question. She seemed so unhappy and scared, but she is lucky she birthed so many children of her own who love her and who now help to take care of her. I am living a completely different life than her--I am without children and not married. By the time she reached my age, she had already had three children. I realize, in seeing her the way she is now (and it will only get worse), that I am terrified of coming down with alzheimer's in my later years. Even for one year it would be pure hell. I've rather have almost any other disease that doesn't involve dementia. Almost anything at all (with a few exceptions), because the confusion of dementia seems so lonely (even if you forget about it in a moment or two)...Actually, the cruelest of realities is that you forget the context of current reality and can get stuck in a perpetual mood with no context that exists within reality. That is my idea of hell on earth...So lonely/scared/angry/confused/sad without reason, and for me, if I get it when I'm old...to not have any friends or family around...to be stuck in a ward somewhere with strangers changing my diapers...I am so scared. It has happened in two generations of my family that I know of, probably more...my grandma, and her mother before that. Both of them have been lucky as they had loving family to help. Now, I am the last of the family line. No siblings or anyone my age or younger in my family. I am the youngest, not even having first cousins! My mom and her siblings are still too young to show any signs of having alzheimer's, but I worry it's a genetic thing with us, and some of them will get it, and then I eventually will get it as well. I can't even begin to fathom how to help out a group of aging relatives who have no children, but who all suffer from dementia (aka my mom's family in ten to twenty years). I don't know what to do with myself when I worry about this or how to 'plan' for it in the right way. I don't know if life makes sense, when the one thing that helps make sense of it (the mind) is taken away. It truly does seem cruel and insane to die the way my grandma's dying, and obviously it takes a toll on my mother and my mother's siblings...
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reader, anonymous, writes (4 March 2010): Hello. First of all, I'm so sorry that you've had to experience Alzheimers. Secondly, my advice would be to seek out a doctor or even a professor with experience in death, dying, and end of life disease like this and make sure you're very aware of the facts. Sometimes knowledge can put the mind to rest and you can find out what your likelihood of coming down with this disease actually is.
Next, you must remember that worrying about things we cannot control only destroys our joy in the present moment. Not to be morbid, but you could get hit by a bus tomorrow and then think how sad it would be if you spent your last days worrying about this. It might also do you good to go and visit some nursing homes and realize that there are many elderly men and women who don't marry, don't have kids, and live fulfilling and happy lives until the very end. I did several studies and interviews in nursing homes and honestly. . . some of the happiest and oldest people in there never had children at all and found that their happiness increased through life.
It is cruel to die through Alzheimers. In all honesty, I would rather end my own life than go that way. But I cannot fret over if I will or won't develop such a disease. Neither can you. Get the facts from a doctor, change your mindset on aging, and maybe even talk to someone like a counselor because truly, this might be your way of dealing with the grief and obsessing over this may be a way of coping with avoiding the pain of the loss of your grandmother as you knew her.
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