Nine Ways to Crazy: Surviving My Mom’s Dementia

By DJ Taranto

Deborah J. Taranto thought when her mother joined her in New York, shed finally be able to help her maintain her health.

What she hadnt considered was how shed maintain her own health: Her mothers deteriorating mind and constant demands made it almost impossible to get anything done.

In this memoir, which includes numerous journal entries, she relives the guilt of struggling to take care of an elderly parent with Alzheimers who managed to raise a house full of children without complaints.

From the classic behavior symptoms of dementia to her mothers hilarious outbursts, she faces her mothers mortalityas well as her ownhead on, weaving symptoms into vignettes that highlight everyday challenges.

Her account reveals the daily struggle of what its like to care for a loved one with Alzheimers and how the experience can affect family members long after a loved one has died.

If youre a caregiver or family member struggling to help someone navigate their final years with dignity, youll be inspired by the humorous and poignant tales in Nine Ways to Crazy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: LifeRich Publishing
• Release date: Apr 7, 2016
• ISBN: 9781489707062

DJ Taranto

Deborah J. Taranto is a native New Yorker. She earned a Master of Science degree from Wagner College, joined St. John’s University faculty in 2002 as an assistant adjunct professor teaching English literature, and teaches English literature at a private high school on Staten Island. She is also the author of a work of fantasy fiction: The Land of Crystals.

Book preview

Copyright © 2016 Deborah J Taranto.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

LifeRich Publishing is a registered trademark of The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc.

LifeRich Publishing

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.liferichpublishing.com

1 [phone]

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4897-0705-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4897-0704-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4897-0706-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016902358

LifeRich Publishing rev. date: 03/28/2016

Contents

I

II    Only the Shadow Knows

III    And then there was one…

IV    Here Comes The Sun

V    One-Day Sale Or

VI    The Christmas Burglar: Hoarding

VII    Baby Boomers and The Sandwich Generation

VIII    Put your Hands on the Table Where I Can See Them!

IX    Decisions

X    Why Did You Take Your Clothes Off, Gypsy Rose Lee?

XI    Guess Who’s Not Coming To Sunday Family Dinner?

XII

XIII    Another Day of Crazy

XIV    A New Reality Show

XV    Don’t Rain on My Parade, and Don’t Pee on it either

XVI    Stages, Symptoms, Types

XVII    Curse Words are reserved for Family Members Only

XVIII    LSD and Other Drugs

XIX    A Day in the Life of the Caregiver

XX    To Tell The Truth: A Goodson-Todman Production

XXI    The Inmates are running the Asylum

XXII    You Can Pick Your Friends, But You Can’t Pick Your Family

XXIII    Around the World in a Day

XXIV    Facts about my Mother

XXV    Post Script

XXVI    The Caregiver

XXVII

XXVIII

XXIX    The Perks of Being a Caregiver

XXX    Journey’s End

Epilogue

About The Author

This book is dedicated to my mother, Jean Ruocco and serves as a

testimony to her perseverance and resilience against all odds.

Some of the people that were instrumental in helping with the care of my mother need to be mentioned at this time. From the beginning Donna was my mother’s nurse and without her help and understanding I would never have been able to traverse this road of caregiver. Thank you for your concern and diligence in helping to make my mom’s last few years as pleasant and comfortable as possible. There were two aides in the last two years that, honestly, I believe were sent from Heaven. Mercy, a young lady studying in college and coming on the weekends to take care of Mom never faulting in her resolve to deliver the best and most heartfelt care. I miss those Sundays when we would cook dinner together. Your kindness will not be forgotten. I would like to thank Magda, the aide who was with my mother as she passed. You were an angel sent to guide and help us then and I am most grateful you have remained in our lives to this day. Thank you to my sister-in-law Nancy who gave of her time to come to New York and take care of Mom; and Jennifer for sharing many nights of turmoil and many a glass of wine. To my family, my late husband, my children and their partners for their love and support, their jokes, and cajoling through some of the toughest times in my life. Lastly, a special thank you with much love to my sister who traveled across the ocean, and continents to come and help with our mother, especially when I needed her the most.

I remember coming home from college after being away for four years and thinking, I can’t live with my parents anymore. It was crazy having to answer to them after being away and on my own for four years, but I had no place to go. Well, it is just as crazy for parents to live with their children. They can’t answer to their children any more than their children can’t answer to them, but that is exactly what happens as time wears on. Why is this so hard?

SUNDAY, APRIL 17, 2011

The Sandwich Generation

What exactly does The Sandwich Generation mean? Well, for one thing you have to be a baby boomer, born after WWII from the late 1940’s through to the early 1960’s. I qualify for boomer status. Secondly, you have to still have children at home and an elderly parent that lives with you. Right again, I qualify on that point as well. So, I am sandwiched between my kids and mother, the ham between two slices of bread. On one end I have three children: twenty-one, twenty-four, twenty-seven and on the other end my mom, ninety-two. In many cases, it is more difficult to care for my aged mom than my three overgrown adolescents. To make matters worse my mom has Alzheimer’s Dementia, and two of my three children and a son-in-law have returned home.

So, I began blogging about this dilemma which is effecting everyone I know in their late forties straight on through and in most cases past commencement of social security benefits. What started out as form of mental blog therapy gradually became the format for this book and a way to share with you my experiences, many which will ring true in your life past, present or future.

I

All you need to start an asylum is an empty room and the right kind of people.

~ Alexander Bullock, My Man Godfrey ~ 1936

My mother had just turned eighty-five in 2004 when she moved from Florida back to New York. I thought I was doing the right thing, the honorable thing. It took three years from the onset of the first symptoms and hours of yelling, begging and crying to finally convince her to move from my sister’s condo in St. Pete Beach, where she lived alone, to New York. Promises of more to do, more company and family close by gave her the much needed incentive to get on the plane and fly north contrary to the flight plan associated with the golden age, the snowbirds of New York.

What prompted the suggestion to move were her continual phone calls of desperation and tears whenever she went off her anti-depressant meds. She would be on them for a couple of months and feel fine and when she went for her doctor’s visit she would ask if she could stop the pills because she felt good and he’d said okay. So, she would go off the meds and resume calling me up two and three times a day crying and complaining and carrying on. This went on for years, three to be exact. On the meds, off the meds, it was a rollercoaster ride with no end in sight. My brother, the oldest of her three children, the only one of us that lived within driving distance of her condo, and who had the least amount of patience was first in line to disregard her rants and take her off his radar. She was driving him crazy to the point where I had to beg him to go see her. She was driving me crazy with her constant phone calls. Somehow I thought it would be better if she lived closer so I could monitor her meds, doctor appointments and all around living conditions. However, somewhere in my thinking, I was terribly mistaken. It was too late by the time I had realized I had made a terrible mistake. Her ticket was bought and she was on her way north.

My only saving grace was that she moved into a senior residence where people pretended to watch over her making sure she ate her meals and was occupied with games, movies and bingo with the other residents. It was in fact a paid baby-sitting or elder care service, an expensive one too. Her time was filled with things that kept her busy and that freed up my time to pay attention to my writing, my family and my job. This sounded like a solid plan. I couldn’t have been more wrong. This arrangement lasted two years, as her symptoms grew more problematic. I spent more and more time traversing Staten Island as she became easily agitated with her fellow residents; bingo was a test she was failing at miserably, and her gait grew steadily unsteady making unsupervised outings unsafe. The residence could no longer pretend to care for her, and now she actually needed looking after.

MONDAY, APRIL 18, 2011

The Sandwich Generation

When my mom moved to New York seven years ago I thought it would be easier to maintain her health and well being because she was close by. What I didn’t figure on was who was going to help maintain mine? Why is it so difficult for a child to take care of an aged parent when a parent can take care of a house full of children? In the past the role of a woman was to take care of her family, raise her children, maintain her house and love her man. Today, a woman has to work a full time job in the rat race of jobs, raise children in our ever declining educational system and mangled economy, maintain a household on a dream and a pray, and somehow find time to keep the marriage alive. Wait…that’s not all. Let us not forget the elderly parent who unless they lived in Medicare housing, would not be able to live on their own. Hence, my story begins.

TUESDAY, APRIL 26, 2011

Deborah Doesn’t Live Here Anymore

I am so tired lately from getting pulled in all directions: my mother, the aides, contemplating redoing the kitchen, getting dinner on the table, cleaning the house, doing the laundry all the usual stuff that goes on in everyday households. There just doesn’t seem to be enough time in the day for all of this and play Bridge!

Let’s look at my dilemma. The cleaning, cooking and laundry is normal, but adding my mom and the aide into the mix just about puts me over the edge. Aides are supposed to keep the patient’s general area clean. They are to bathe and dress the patient, cook and in some cases, when necessary, feed the person too. I have taken over cooking dinner because I have family living in the house, however, sometimes my family is not around and I would be content to just eat a salad, or an omelet. That isn’t good enough for my mom. When I try to pass off a meal like that or order out she complains about the poor food in the restaurant, AKA - my house! Cleaning her space is the aide’s responsibility, but since it encroaches on everyone else’s space it’s a battle not worth fighting. However, my mom’s bedroom should be the aide’s responsibility, but I have learned that you fight the battles you can win and this one just isn’t as important as some of the other issues like the bathing and feeding. Forget about keeping Mom engaged. One of the problems with dementia patients is that they don’t concentrate on any one thing for any real length of time. If they like 40’s music that’s fine for a while, but I have put the music on in the morning and gone out and come back late in the afternoon to find them still sitting in the living room listening to the same station. I know I would go crazy and I don’t have dementia, imagine a person that is locked in limbo.

I don’t work full time anymore. It seems this is a common situation for caregivers. Statistically, more than half of caregivers either quit or lose their jobs within the first two years of taking over the care of a parent or family member. Caring for a parent is a full-time job even if you are not the one bathing and dressing them.

There are days, however, when the aid calls out sick and a replacement is unavailable, so I have to take on the duties of the aid. Sometimes it is just easier for me to do it because at least my mom is not always calling my name.

When my mom first came to live with me almost two years ago she always called me by my sister’s name; maybe because she’d older and her visits are a big to-do because she doesn’t live close by. It used to make me angry because I was always doing the grunt work, yet she couldn’t get my name straight. I thought Mom was just being difficult, but things have changed since she moved in with my family and I, and now I want to change my name! Familiarity is the culprit especially with someone who has dementia. They hang on to everything and everyone because forgetting is frightening. Be careful what you wish for it may come true and than you’ll find yourself wishing your name was anything but what it