A Shadow of Herself.

I have a patient who is quite young in comparison to the rest of the residents of the facility I work for. However, sadly, she is in the more later stages of the disease process. She always seems to be moving, even though she is as quite as a mouse (except when she's upset). Even when sitting her knee is bouncing or her thumb taps a cadence on my knuckles as she grasps my hand. With her head held bent due to an unfortunate irreversible side effect of some of her medications, she often will walk into walls or get stuck in corners or behind furniture because she can not see. Consequently this also leads to her falling to the floor often because she'll see a chair out of the corner of her eye but her perception of space and depth is altered, both from the angle of her head as well as the disease. And when her husband comes to visit her with their little dog in tow, I can see it in his eyes just how much this all is killing him. I can see that he is thinking "we were supposed to grow old together. We were supposed to watch out children grow, our grandchildren, and share it all as we remember our life together. But this is not the wife I married. She doesn't know me. She doesn't remember our children or even this dog." I can see the guilt he feels for the decision he had to make to put her in a facility because he could no longer care for her alone. I see this all as well as the child-like wonder and actions of this 60 something year old woman with Alzheimer's Disease.

www.alz.org