Behaviors or WTDWTD have many components. We discussed where the disease starts or concentrates in the brain, determines what behavior or function loses show up first. Early in the disease, rarely do two different people act alike or have similar disabilities. Some people with Alzheimer's Disease loose the ability to speak early in the disease, others have mobility troubles early and yet others have neither of these two but have very faulty judgement. You probably have noticed that I did not mentioned memory loss.
Memory loss is the the most frequent symptom identified with the disease and yet it may or not be an early part of the disease. Although memory loss is not normal aging. Just, however, because a person does not have significant memory loss, does not mean there is no Alzheimer's disease. The memory loss, as well as the behaviors we have discussed, originate from the brain death that is occurring. It tough to think about but it is truly the cause of all we have discussed.
In addition to the brain tissue destruction which causes the behaviors, the person's own personality also contributes. Sometimes the person's characteristics become more exaggerated because the loss of the person's inhibitions allow a trait to become more exaggerated. Sometimes the loss of inhibitions allow the person to do some things they never would have done with the normal inhibitions in place.
Mom has always been kind of partial to men. She liked male MDs, and male waiters. She always was very discreet about these choices, but we kids knew this to be true. A few weeks ago, she said "hello Corey" to a male care giver as he passed by. One of the female caregivers said to Mom, "Helen, why do you remember his name and you don't remember mine?" Without missing a beat, Mom said"because he is better looking than you are!" With out the dementia, mom would never have said this, but she may have thought it. The disease allowed her to now say it. It was worth a good laugh and even she chuckled. Just another WTDWTD!!
God Bless and may She keep you in the palm of her hand!!
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The man factor...with mom, the last several years as the dementia progressed, her bitterness and unforgiveness towards men began to surface from a place inside her that noone even knew existed! When she was a teen, a guy tried to rape her. Her first husband (my dad), the love of her life, died in 1969, leaving her alone...then not too long after that, she married my uncle (dad's brother), and he passes away fairly soon after. Her son's were never around to help or support her, until my husband came on the scene (second marriage). He became the son she never had basically. She loved him to pieces. Which made it that much harder when all that blackness in her came out, it came out directed at him.... He eventually was able to come to grips with it and knows that it is not him personally that she is striking out at, and can handle the verbal and sometime physical assaults. But now, she really doesn't do any of that, her condition and mind doesn't allow it. She can still get mad though and get quite a grip on your wrist, and a look in her eye! lol But bascially it is passed now. There is a male nurse who comes sometime from hospice, and she likes to look at him, so she is not anti-men, never has been, it was just those deep-seated emotions that would rise up, in her when she did not have the means to keep them locked up anymore. Donna
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