Did Somebody Call a Fireman?

So, about a year ago exactly I happened to call my mom as my daughter and I were on our way over to visit. We were nearby and thought we would stop by. My mom has early onset Alzheimer's and was living by herself at the time, so we tried to stop by frequently to check on her. This was the conversation that took place.

Ring ring.
Her: Hello.
Me: Hi, Mom. What are you doing? P and I are going to stop by in a few minutes if that's okay.
Her: Sure, if you get her soon she can see the fire truck.
Me: What? What fire truck?
Her: Oh there are some firemen here putting out the fire. Do you want to talk to them?
She hands the phone off to a random fireman. :)

So apparently my mother decided she was going to use her oven. (Funny, that thought never crossed her mind as we were growing up. Lots of cold cereal and microwave dinners for us.) Although she got confused (don't know if this can be blamed on the Alzheimer's, she really doesn't cook much and didn't have a lot of experience with the oven)and turned a dial for the stovetop instead of the oven settings. There were some items sitting on that burner that caught fire and a very small house fire ensued.

The problem was that my mom, because of the Alzheimer's, did not know what to do. She did not know how to use her phone to call 911 and did not think about grabbing the fire extinguisher from the kitchen cabinet. My mom was doing pretty well in day to day life with her Alzheimer's, but when facing an unknown or stressful situation, her reasoning ability did not work. So she ran next door to her neighbor and explained what was going on. The neighbor called 911 and honestly put the fire out with the extinguisher before they had gotten there. We are eternally grateful to them that they were home and acted quickly.

This situation was the eye opener that my brothers finally needed that my mom could not continue living by herself. For normal day to day living she was fine by herself, but for safety reasons she could no longer be alone. I had met and toured with an independent/assisted living facility 6 months prior, but my brothers had dragged their feet on the move. They finally agreed that it was time for the move. She would still be living by herself in an apartment (with the appliances unplugged), but it would be within a community where there are activities, restaurants, medical offices, and caregivers who can check in on people.

My mom went, kicking and screaming, but we got her to agree to try it out for a couple of months, while her kitchen was being renovated from the fire.

And that is where she is still peacefully living a year later sweetly nestled into this senior community. Not quite.

What's Your Favorite Movie?

As a kid one of my favorite movies was Disney's Pollyanna. I have 2 brothers and each weekend we took turns picking 1 movie to rent. I guarantee that my brothers were not thrilled when each time it was my pick, I picked Pollyanna with the occasional Annie thrown in the mix. Who knew though how all those hours clocked watching Pollyanna and her sunny outlook on life would affect my own.

I am writing this blog because I feel there is a need. I am in my mid-thirties with 2 young children and my mom has Early Onset Alzheimer's. She is 66 now and has recently moved into an assisted living home. She was diagnosed almost 2.5 years ago and to put it mildly the past 2.5 years have been a struggle. So if someone else can read this and know that someone else has been through some of the things they are going through, I will be happy.

My family is dysfunctional and yet shockingly functional. I think we have been through so much dysfunction in our lives that we can power through situations that would bring others to a halt. Long story short, parents are divorced, have been most of my life, mom lived alone never remarrying.

About 3 years ago I started noticing that my mom was having alot of issues with her memory. My grandfather had Alzheimer's disease and I feared all of the things I was seeing within my mom definitely were pointing to that. I tried to convince my brothers that mom had early onset Alzheimers, but they thought I was crazy. Time went on, my mom's memory worsened and I began pestering my brothers more and more that she needed help. Sidenote: My mom is not particularly warm and fuzzy, more like cold and prickly. She has a good heart, but she is not an easy person to talk to. I always have been and always will be scared of my mom. So the thought of approaching my mom a convincing her to go to a doctor to have her memory evaluated was terrifying.

I lucked out and my brothers agreed to talk to my mom if I actually took her to the doctor. I outsmarted them though. I made the appointment and took my mom to the doctor, but I played good cop and pretended that I was just going to satisfy my brothers' crazy thoughts about her memory. :) The doctor performed some tests and agreed it appeared that my mom did have early Alzheimers, but said there was always the chance it was something else causing the memory issues and so she wanted to run several blood tests to rule everything else out.

About a week later, I was out for a walk and my phone rang. It was my mom's doctor, she was going over the blood results with me explaining that everything looked normal physically and that she was indeed giving an official diagnosis of Alzheimers. As she was telling me I kept hearing an annoying buzzing in my ear over and over. My uncle was calling repeatedly. I asked the doctor to hold and asked my husband to call my uncle to find out what was so important. As I got off the phone with the doctor, my husband approached me. My father had a heartache and died minutes ago. In a matter of minutes, I had essentially lost both of my parents. My dad's death was sudden, but my mom's has been slow and heart-wrenching.

So back to Pollyanna. If you haven't seen the movie, you should. Pollyanna had a rough life but always tried to see the good in a situation. Over the past two years with everything I have encountered with my mom's Alzheimers, the best way I can approach things is to think it could always be worse. There are so many people in the world who have been dealt an even worse hand, so I have to be happy for what I have. This philosophy keeps me from going crazy. So that's my first piece of advice for you.