Friday, September 28, 2012

Learning to live and love in spite of a personality-robbing disease

Here is a link to a wonderful article about care taking for a spouse with FTD.

http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/homepage-feature/item/44479-living-with-frontotemporal-degeneration?Itemid=1&linktype=hp_featured

Monday, September 10, 2012

On Disappearing...

So my mother's birthday just passed...she turned 68.  She and my dad came to Round Rock to visit for the weekend.  Daddy called me very frustrated on Friday...her actual birthday.  They had been planning to go out to a nice dinner in her hometown of Moulton, Texas.  She had told my dad that she wanted to eat at Kloesel's Steakhouse for her birthday.  Daddy had planned to take her a little early to avoid the crowd on Friday evening.  Mother doesn't do well with crowds of people anymore.  They were going to have a nice dinner and then head to Round Rock the next morning.  Daddy called frustrated because mother had decided that she was going to wait in the hot car until he was ready to leave.  This of course was about four hours prior to their planned trip.  Daddy kept having to go get her and bring her in till he finally called and said they were going to eat and come straight to Round Rock.  So that is what they did.

We had a lovely weekend.  We swam Friday evening and ate light appetizers.  Our friends Ken and Julie came over for a visit, too. 

One of the main reasons mother and daddy had decided to come to visit was because they both needed to do a little shopping. Mother for clothes and daddy for shoes.  On Saturday we ventured out in the early afternoon.  Kiley and I went ahead to Chico's to get things lined up and to tell them about my mother's brain disease.  It worked beautifully.  We had lots of clothes lined up for her to try on.  I even had some glimpses of the old mother.  She loved to shop and buy beautiful new things.  On this particular shopping trip, she found a beautiful bracelet right when she walked in.  Of course she bought it.  And even though it was a lot of work, everyone got what they wanted out of the trip.

On Sunday my mom knew they were going back to Hallettsville so she started heading to the car early again.  We had to re-direct her several times before she and daddy finally left.

This time my mom mentioned that she felt like we were disappearing.

Today I found a NY Times article that I wanted to share.  It is about disappearing:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/magazine/my-mothers-struggle-with-dementia.html?_r=2&hp&pagewanted=all