i remember my mom facing all of this too as my dad descended deeper into dementia. his illness had a profound impact on our small family. we were like a house that had suddenly lost one of its supporting pillars — standing precariously in a storm that we had no idea how to navigate, knowing we could topple at any moment.
unlike john, once we had an official diagnosis to explain bouts of confusion and memory loss, out-of-character angry blowups and extreme apathy toward just about everything that he used to love, my dad quickly lost his cognitive abilities. and despite efforts to do all the things that are supposed to help slow brain degeneration — exercise, whole foods, vitamins, social interaction (my mom even got him doing those brain games) — the downward spiral became faster.
he would get lost on streets that he knew well, struggle to remember who we were, and happily talk to photographs in magazines as if the shiny smiling faces were old friends. soon after came aggression, seizures, incontinence, the inability to dress himself, walk, eat, and then finally, to swallow.
but before this massive obvious decline, in addition to behaviour that was completely unlike his soft-spoken nature, he had also made nonsensical financial decisions without my mom’s knowledge, things that she is still recovering from today. still, it could have been worse. when my dad moved into a care home, a woman whose husband — also with dementia — was moving in on the same day, told us that he had given their life savings away to a woman he claimed to have married.