One Size or One Description Does Not Apply To All Dementia or All People

Going through some old papers. Since husband died in 2011 it's been sporadic cleaning, giving away and putting away for another time. This is one of them. Also going through bits and pieces of life so important at the time realizing I must have a more discriminating eye and let go of more. After all, who wants half the stuff I found so memorable and necessary? And I can't take it with me.


As with so much in life, organization is not my foundation of saving everything. I tried over the years but something more important always interrupted. Even now, I find I've put things with great meaning down on a desk top, placed lovingly in a box and then managed to combine it with other things for a more "thorough" going through that gets shelved along with the mementos.


Came across an envelope I remember Mom handing to me some days or even a week or more after my birthday before last. Inside were four broaches, two with missing "stones", all dating from varying time periods.


Costume jewelry, not that old and certainly not of any value other than sentimental. She still had them with her although we'd slowly exchanged her "old" jewelry for pieces we picked up at various discount places because she kept breaking pieces apart, especially necklaces that wouldn't go over her head. She couldn't fasten clasps and hadn't been able to wear her pierced earrings for many months; no one in her Long Term Care facility cared enough to help her with them.


Each piece came "wrapped" in one of the paper hand towels dispensed in a container in her bathroom she used after she washed her hands. It was all she had. And she wouldn't ask us for wrapping paper because she would then, as she always did, want to surprise us, want to do something "special" and want to "do it" herself.


I cried thinking of how she was still able to print/write even though we'd finally learned just months before she had possible or probable Lewy Body Dementia. Even that short a time ago, the diagnosis wasn't certain and it took Mom's final months exhibiting constant forms of the disease's effects to showcase the disease as what it is -- debilitating and providing a constant battlefront for the person who suffers from this roller coaster disease.


Mom's Dementia did not put her into a "comatose" state until the very end; one where she simply sat or laid somewhere with no ability to converse. Mom's abilities varied widely and they came and went but she was high functioning almost to the end of life.


Because Mom was able to fight and win some struggles while incapable of stopping the continuing advancement and inevitable end, people she would meet in 2012 thought she was "so good" "for her age".


Looking at the envelope, comparing it to other years, such a change. Mom said her "problems" were sight but seeing how she wrote words that were somewhat aligned and had space and dimension, you have to look further. She used to use cursive, on this envelope she mostly prints. She's recycled an envelope we'd given her with a card for her birthday which was a couple of weeks after my actual birthdate. Can't remember exactly when she gave it to me; that time was so crushed together.


She'd used the back of the envelope to try out pens, you can see many up and down marks from different pens, black and blue ink.  She wrote on both sides and probably forgot she'd written on the front and then wrote on the back. The words are almost the same so at this time she was able to hold some thoughts, still, in her mind. "Happy xxth Birthday Late .......With Love, Mom" on the front and "Happy  xx Birthday Xxxxxxx Love, Mom" on the back. Similar but slightly different.  She mentions my name on the back, not the front; she uses the format of a number followed by "th" on the front but not on the back and gets my age correct; she calls me by name on the back but not on the front."


Mom had lost all ability to read by this time. Her eye Dr said she had "perfect" vision after her laser surgery and at a recent appointment to check the eye that was done. But Mom could not focus, could not "read" and that's common in Lewy Body Dementia and others as it's the brain's ability to interpret what the eye sees.  Yet her writing, while certainly not "linear" has some format.  And, you can see she wrote under the seal of the envelope the word "HAPPY" because she sealed the envelope to keep the items inside the bulging envelope.


Mom's Lewy Body Dementia did not showcase itself in many ways we're taught Dementia and Lewy Body Dementia "exhibits".  Mom's social skills, her intelligence and probably her lifelong ability to struggle through and overcome so much were all a part of her disease and its effects. From reading other websites including http://www.thieflewybodydementia.com/ , people affected with the disease often function until the very end at higher levels of ability both physical and mental.


LBD mimics Parkinsons and other brain illnesses in affecting some processes and functions while others remain until they're reduced or eliminated. We look forward to the day when Scientists compare the very young and those with Dementia, especially Lewy Body Dementia and contrast the abilities and capabilities of the underdeveloped and undeveloped mind to the mind that has been attacked by the disease of Dementia.