Spirals

Photo circa 1994 when I visited Mum from university

I’m sure it’s similar to a lot of illnesses but with my Mums condition I haven’t seen what could be termed as a steady decline. Her dementia is more like a pattern of spirals of decline followed by a plateau until the next spiral arrives.

A lot of the time I don’t even recognise the spiral until it has passed. Each time she seems to lose some form of ability. The latest spiral is the loss of speech whereby she is no longer able to articulate. Whilst she seems to believe she is conversing naturally she is actually coming across as incoherent. Not too dissimilar to a baby chatting away but not making any sense.

Each time she loses an ability her world seems to shrink. So earlier on in the illness examples would include no longer able to drive – first from the fear of getting lost but also losing the technical ability to drive a car. She lost the ability to operate every day machinery such as a washing machine. Her world literally shrunk when she lost the ability to venture further afield and so navigating from home to church and the doctor surgery was the most she could manage.

At the time we didn’t recognise it but when the care home recommended moving Mum from the residential floor to the dementia floor Mum was with hindsight coming out of another spiral whereby her basic needs such as personal hygiene, dressing etc required far more attention.

With each loss of an ability comes the requirement for increased care and assistance. Now I don’t mean to paint a negative picture. The reality is that it is sad to watch, however as I have stressed so many times happiness can come from simple things in life.

So whilst this time last year I would take Mum out for her favourite fish and chips on a Friday now a cup of tea is all she can manage. Back then she was able to articulate much better so the conversation flowed a bit better and now I have to guess what she is trying to say but we look at pictures in the paper and watch the world go by out the window.

The point is we still have as an enjoyable time now as we did a year ago. We still laugh together as much as we always did. It comes back to the importance of living in and enjoying the moment!