Caring For A Loved One With Alzheimer Disease

As a family member of a love one with Alzheimer’s disease, it was hard for us to understand the whole illness but as time went on and we learned more about the condition, it wasn’t hard to understand.

It started back when I was still in school, we couldn’t understand why grandma would always forget where she was going. She would get lost and we would always worry about grandma’s whereabouts. So my grandpa finely gave the car away, since then she wasn’t able to drive anymore.

Grandma didn’t want to lose her driver license. For that was her independent. It was sad but we had to do it to keep her safe and we as family felt better knowing that grandma wouldn’t be out in the streets lost.

Then as time went by, we noticed more things about grandma that wasn’t right. I would go to her house as I always did and noticed that she was putting newspaper in the oven and turning on the stove. One day I went to grandma’s house and it was smoking. I thought for minutes that she had burnt something while she was cooking but I got to looking and I found the newspaper in the stove.

I asked grandma what she was tying to do and she couldn’t remember. I was scared at that point so I moved in next door to my grandparents. Living next doors, I could be there to watch her without her knowing what I was doing. The move was a big help.

I would go over there to visit. She didn’t know what I was really doing. It got harder everyday for us to see the illness was taking my grandma. We would always say she would get better but she never did.

Grandma didn’t like baths. We would have to give her a bath and she would just hate that. That was a hard day for us. No one wanted to give grandma a bath because she would act out so bad. But as we learned about all this, we found out that people with Alzheimer’s does not like any form of water. So we would then just wash her up and that was better for us. We then had peace when it was bath day.

We would let grandma go shopping for the home and she would go to the bathroom when we would leave. But she would always end up going in her pants. So we would have to go back home and change her. She couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her. It was hard for her as well because at that point she knew something was wrong but didn’t know what.

It got to the point that grandma would just lie around and sleep. It was too hard for us as family members to take care of grandma any more so we as family needed to have a talk and we thought it was best to put grandma in a nursing home where she could get all the help and care she needed around the clock.

It was the hardest thing we could have done as family members. Yet we knew we couldn’t do it anymore. Grandma was in the nursing home for about 12 years. We as family would see grandma slowly going into her own little world.

We would go get her and bring her home for the holidays, or just go get her and take her out for ice cream. We were always there for grandma. But it was hard as loved ones to deal with this illness. It finally took grandmas life about 2 years ago. We as family miss grandma but she in a better place now, we still remember her, and all the good and bad times we had. It is hard to take care of a loved one with this illness. It is hard to deal with it because we watched grandma go from a strong healthy grandma to a sick grandma.