Alzheimer’S Caregiving: Lessons from a Surviving Spouse

By Richard J. Farrell

Millions of people suffer from Alzheimers disease, other forms of dementia, and various debilitating long-term illnesses. These ailments profoundly affect relatives and friends, and there is no manual that tells you how to be a caregiver and to cope with these illnesses.

In Alzheimers Caregiving, author Richard J. Farrell presents a review of the lessons he learned during the fifteen years he spent caring for his wife, who suffered from Alzheimers disease. These lessons will help you to live in the day when your loved one deteriorates physically, mentally, and emotionally. It will also help you to

recognize signs and seek qualified medical help; get educated and understand the diseases progression; acknowledge your loved one is changing and is not the same person you knew; adapt to who they are and who they will become; rely on a circle of family and friends; stay vigilant; acknowledge stress, depression, and changes that will overtake you if not handled properly; never stop learning.

The information presented in Alzheimers Caregiving shows you how to face tough decisions and helps you build and maintain a balanced outlook while caring for your loved one.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 20, 2011
• ISBN: 9781450276467

Richard J. Farrell

Richard J. Farrell, retired as a human resources corporate executive, National Speakers Association member, and private consultant to corporations, is currently a special projects contractor with Triumph Consulting Inc. of Bettendorf, Iowa. He resides near his sons, Richard and Thomas, in Dawsonville, Georgia, a community fifty miles north of Atlanta.

Book preview

Contents

Preface

Recognize Signs, Acknowledge the Possibility of Alzheimer’s, and Seek Qualified Medical Help

Get Educated and Understand the Progression of the Disease

Recognize Your Loved One Is Changing

Acknowledge Stress and Depression

Faith in God Sustains

Rely on a Circle of Family and Friends

Learn to Stay Ever Vigilant and Be Ready to Adapt

I Will Never Put You in a Nursing Home.

Stop Trying to Figure Out How Sick Your Loved One Is and When She Is Going to Die

When Is a Lie a Lie and When Is a Lie Not a Lie? Should I Lie to My Loved One?

Do All the Things You Ever Dreamed About So There Will Be No Regrets Later

March to the Beat of Your Own Drummer and Never Suffer Conformists Gladly

I Love You. I Will Always Take Care of You.

God Is Always in Control and God Always Works in His Perfect Way

Prepare In Advance

I Am Not a Hero

Rest in Peace

Epilogue

What Do I Do Now?

Stay Busy

This Is an Emotional Roller Coaster Ride

Loss Is Not Less Because You Have a Long Time to Prepare

Never Stop Learning

Preface

For a long time, I have considered writing about my experiences with my wife Bridget’s illness. I decided I would do nothing until God finally took her to her reward. Only then would our journey be complete, and I could offer complete thoughts, feelings, and recollections. Bridget finally succumbed to the complications of Alzheimer’s disease on December 22, 2008. In the months afterward, I realized that I was not ready to write the whole story of our years with Alzheimer’s. Over the ensuing months, there were many more post-Bridget stories to tell. The effects of Alzheimer’s and the lessons to be learned have endured long after her death.

Bridget was diagnosed with Cognitive Memory Impairment (CMI) in 1993–94, although doctors say there were signs of potential problems as early as 1988. She was officially diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in early 1996. I will share with you the events from 1988 to her death, as well as some from after her death, with the major emphasis on the important lessons I learned from being Bridget’s caregiver and surviving spouse. These were and are difficult times, but I am grateful to recall so many of the positive experiences during these years.

I am writing this for (1) catharsis (Bridget was and continues to be the center of my life), and (2) to share my feelings, thoughts, and findings, which may help others deal not only with Alzheimer’s but any other long-term illness that drains the sufferer, family, and other loved ones. Alzheimer’s is an insidious disease that has devastating consequences for everyone involved.

I am aware that many of you have already experienced what I will detail. Yet you may have sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, grandchildren, or friends who could benefit from the important lessons on these pages.

There will be no discussions of the medical aspects of the disease. As far as I was concerned, Bridget had an irreversible terminal condition that no amount of my technical knowledge would help. My main focus was to attempt to understand what the disease would do and learn how to care for Bridget.

I am not interested in fame, fortune, or using perfect literary style. I do not worry about sentences ending in prepositions or dangling participles. This gives me a freedom to say what I feel. Please forgive the frequent use of the word I; this is the only way I feel comfortable in telling a very personal story. However, I am not the story. Bridget is the story.

The sources of information in this manuscript are my experiences, recollections, discussions and meetings with people, and books and medical newsletters mentioned later in the book. I want my ideas to be about feelings and experiences and not formal library research.

I purposely do not show a long list of people I want to mention and thank for their advice and input. I have learned no matter how thorough I try to be in offering gratitude, someone will be inadvertently forgotten or feel he/she did not receive ample credit. All of you know who you are, and there may be some who do not realize the contribution you have made. Thank you to all who were part of our lives, shared information, and inspired me so I could produce this work. Of course, lots of love to my wife, Bridget, and sons, Richard and Thomas.

Recognize Signs, Acknowledge the Possibility of Alzheimer’s, and Seek Qualified Medical Help

In 1988 Bridget and I lived in Houston, Texas, and were preparing for early retirement from my corporate management job. She came home from food shopping one evening and told me she did not want to drive anymore. She related how she had narrowly avoided two serious accidents in the last few days, which would have been her fault. Bridget started recalling other incidents of unsure and unsafe driving over the most recent months. She became fearful of driving. Later we learned fear of driving is one of the first signs of future Alzheimer’s disease.

Since I had known Bridget, she had had a short memory span and little recollection of events before seven to eight years of age. We attributed these characteristics to a life-threatening experience she had with meningococcal meningitis, which she survived, though it took her nine-year-old brother’s life. Yet she went on to earn her registered nurse diploma in New York State by passing a difficult battery of five state regents board examinations. Through the years, we recognized the short memory span but did not view it as troublesome since she performed well in her career and all other facets of her life.

In 1989, we retired from the corporate world and moved from Houston to St. Augustine, Florida. We had purchased a home on the Intracoastal Waterway, just a few miles from the Atlantic Ocean. We loved living on the water, and I worked in my private consulting business. We were fortunate to achieve our basic goals of earning enough income to meet our expenses, grow our investments, and take trips together throughout the United States and around the world. Life was good.

However, after Bridget ceased driving in 1988, I did notice a moderate decrease in her short-term memory span over the next years. I attributed this to the natural aging process and, at the time, did not consider this a major problem. In 1993, Bridget approached me and suggested she be tested because of increasing signs of forgetfulness and lapses of memory. A pattern of behavior had developed in which she began forgetting events that just occurred, people’s names, places she had been, and things she was supposed to do.

Bridget was tested at Mayo Clinic in Florida. The doctors found she was suffering from CMI (Cognitive Memory Impairment), a condition that impairs short-term memory retention. They told us CMI was usually a forerunner of Alzheimer’s disease. The doctors said it was probable that the slow progression of Bridget’s condition started in about 1988, when her fear of driving became apparent.

Bridget was unusual in that she initiated the concerns about her memory problems. Usually it is family and friends who first notice the problem and often have the difficult task of convincing the loved one that she has a problem. I am told it can be quite traumatic when the sufferer does not believe or accept there is a problem. While Bridget initiated the concerns of memory loss and immediately accepted her condition, over time she experienced periods in which she would be in complete denial and did not want anyone to think she had Alzheimer’s.

In 1995, we took a corporate management work assignment with a good friend, Dan DePuydt. We relocated to Iowa for about two years, which was the projected length of the job assignment. Bridget was enthusiastic about the move. This was a short-term assignment, so we retained our Florida home and began enjoying a different culture in the heartland of the country. We were well paid and built additional retirement assets. We were also close to my alma mater, so we traveled to all of the home football games. Bridget always relished the college campus weekends with all the activities surrounding the football games.

During our stay in Iowa, I began to notice an increasing pattern of paranoia in Bridget. She felt people were entering our residence and stealing washcloths, towels, small amounts of laundry detergent, and the like. She began hiding things under our bed and her pillow so these objects would be safe. I do not know how she slept since all of the articles under her pillow made her sleep as though she were almost sitting erect. It was time to arrange for further testing and medical review.

We traveled to Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Alzheimer’s neuropsychologists diagnosed her condition as still being cognitive memory impairment but stressed that the onset of the first stage of Alzheimer’s was imminent and would be irreversible. Two doctors met with us and spelled out the probable progression of the disease; the various effects on Bridget, myself, and other family members; and the course of future action we should consider.

I cannot emphasize too strongly that the most critical steps involving potential cognitive memory