I witnessed an assault that no one could stop.

Everyone who knows her, cares about her and loves her watched as Alzheimer, a known thief, attacked her brain and robbed her of every sensible thought, every memory and stole who she was, leaving her empty.

We’ve known her almost forever.
She was in her early 60’s when we began to notice a change in her words and behavior.
We knew something was wrong and feared what that something was.

As the testing results slowly revealed the monster, we were all forced to face her reality.
She was leaving, not voluntarily, she was being forced.
It took a while to believe and accept but the evil monster wants to show what it does, so stole just enough of her words making a complete thought tough for her to communicate.
We could all deny for a short time before we had to surrender to what was happening.

Thursday November 10th.
Oh how I hate airports!!

Our close friend Tom, told us he’d arranged it so we could go up through security and meet his wife Sarah at the gate.
She wouldn’t be able to find us otherwise.
But the hard-ass at the desk told us only one of us were going to be able to pass through security, and she didn’t care WHAT the husband had been told on the other end.
Control Freak!!

Well, there was no question as to who was gonna go get her.
No guessing on that one.
If it was me, both Sarah and I would become lost, maybe forever…..wandering the airport because some Bossy Bag told us only one could go to the gate!

Lobo passed through security then turned around and waved and disappeared up the escalator stairs.
I found a seat so I could see them as they came down the escalator.
It was just after 10 p.m. when Lobo called to tell me the plane had landed.
Fifteen minutes later there they were, gliding down the moving steps.

She’d forgotten her coat on the plane so they had to go back and find it.

She smiled and waved.
A fear relieved.
I wasn’t sure she was gonna recognize me.

Hugs and Hi’s and our visit began.

First airport task…..get to the carousel and find her luggage.

Soon as Sarah saw the luggage coming around on the carousel, she became visibly worried.
She looked at us with a big question mark expression…..she couldn’t remember what her luggage looked like.
We assured her we’d find it.
“Look for the suitcase with lots of ribbons,” I told her.

While we were waiting, Sarah walked impatiently around the luggage area.
Lobo stayed at the carousel, and I stayed with Sarah.

She became preoccupied with an area, a locked room with a big glass window.
It was the lost luggage room.
All sizes, shapes and colors of luggage were piled everywhere in the room.
She was glued to the window, I think desperately hoping to see her luggage.
I tried to explain that was lost luggage and her luggage wasn’t lost, just wasn’t off the plane yet but that didn’t seem to register.

It took 10 minutes of watching luggage go round and round until we spotted the blue piece loaded with colored ribbons.
Lobo pulled it off the conveyer belt and we were on our way.

Immediately after retrieving the luggage, Sarah began worrying and verbalizing her concern about which door we should go out of.
I kept telling her, “just follow Bob.”

We reached our car and brrrrr it was cold outside at 10 p.m. in Sacramento in November!!

Home was a 30 minute drive.
Lobo sometimes has a heavy foot that presses a bit too hard on the gas pedal when he drives the freeways.
I reminded him that a speeding red Mustang would surely attract attention and get him a ticket.
I also reminded him of our “deal.”
Whatever the amount of the ticket…..that’s how much I go spend at Macy’s!
From the back seat Sarah commented,…..”I have Alzheimer’s, I won’t get a ticket.”
What the heck do you say to that?

She talked the entire 30 minutes home.
The sound of the engine and the heater fan made it tough to hear all she was saying.
We tried to respond appropriately every time she took a breather.

When we reached home, she was kind of apprehensive.
She walked cautiously and slowly through the rooms as if seeing them for the first time.

It was late, we were all three tired.

I found a nightgown in her luggage….. that was the easy part.
The hard part was trying to convince her to put it on.
It took about 20 minutes of very patiently trying to convince her to put it on and get ready for sleep.
I’d leave to give her privacy to change and within minutes she’d come out into the hallway still not in her nightgown and then not know how to get back into the little guest room we’d made for her.
She wanted to know who would be using the adjoining bathroom and seemed relieved when we told her it was only for her.
I finally did a nightgown bribe.
I convinced her to get into her nightie so she could watch some TV in bed.
It worked.
I put on the TV, set the timer for 60 minutes.
She didn’t want to get into bed but agreed to sit in the recliner with an afghan.

We all fell asleep (I think!).

This was the beginning of the three weeks we agreed to spend with her so Tom, her husband and our dear friend, could have a much needed vacation and break away from it all.

FRIDAY NOVEMBER 11th.
At 3 a.m. our dogs barked at the early morning paper delivery person.
The barking woke and scared Sarah.
My dogs heard her walking the hallway and jumped out of bed to see what was going on.
I followed the dogs and found her standing in the hallway awake and again confused.
She asked how to get back into her room which she was standing right in front of.
It was then I decided that I’d label the bedroom and bathroom doors for her.
I helped her back into bed and assured her that all was fine, it was just the paper delivery person.

She slept (well, I hoped she did) until 8 in the morning.

Tom said she ate a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios every morning and never deviated. So she ate her Cheerios and her day began.

We emptied her luggage and found a spot for everything.

She watched a morning TV show then took a little snooze in her chair.
It was a beautiful warm, sunny day so we decided to take the dogs for a walk.

When we got back home, Sarah saw the bookcase full of photo books.
She asked if she could look at the pictures.
I gave her a photo book from years ago when we had all spent a glorious week atop the Pacific at a place called The Sea Ranch.
I wondered if anything looked familiar to her.
I asked her if she remebered all the photos, she answered with an unconvincing “yes.”
What I was quickly learning is that somehow she knew things weren’t right and so she had begun to cover up and try to say the right answers.

Lunch was like her breakfast, a daily grilled Swiss cheese sandwich, no deviation.
We sat at the table and chatted while we ate.
Her stories were wandering thoughts with fragmented and incomplete sentences.

In the late afternoon, we shopped for a few groceries and then picked up a pizza to bring home.
She sat with me all day, and we talked…..all day!

She seemed to have so much anger toward Tom but asked over and over when was he coming.
All we could say was, “he’ll be here soon.”

She sipped a small glass of wine with us before dinner.
We ate the pizza, turned on the TV and all three of us fell asleep on the sofa.
The dogs barked at 11 p.m. and woke us up.
Sarah was startled.
She jumped up and tried to go somewhere but she didn’t know where to go.
We assured her it was OK.
What we were finding was that we needed to be comfortable and confident with her as she seemed to frighten easily.

I walked with her to her room.
She asked me to put on the TV, she wanted to watch Letterman.
I did as she asked and set the timer for 90 minutes.

SATURDAY NOVEMBER 12th.
She was up at 7:30, dressed and standing in the hallway.
She had her slacks on over her nightgown and a T-shirt.
She asked what day it was and when was Miller coming?
She always referred to Tom by their last name.
She again verbalized anger toward him.
I tried to convince her that he didn’t leave her, she left him and hopped on a plane to California to spend some time with us.
That brought a smile to her face, she seemed to like that.
She asked Lobo to give him a hard time whenever he finally arrived.

The three of us sat at the table and had breakfast.
She repeated the same stories over and over and continually asked the names of the dogs.
It took us no time to realize, the three weeks were going to require MUCH patience with repetition and we were going to need to act as if each story she told was the first time we were hearing it.

After breakfast, I suggested she take a shower.
I didn’t know how else I was gonna get the clothes off of her and back on the right way.
She agreed to the shower but became a little irritated when I asked for her dirty clothes.

Next she couldn’t find her hair brush, nor could she find her hat.
I suggested we buy a new hairbrush but she said NO and meant it…..said she had one but someone took it.
She wanted to know if I took it.
That’s when I knew I had to find the damn hair brush and I did.
It was in plain sight on the dresser.
The hat was on top the bookcase where I told her we’d keep it.

My daughter Melissa stopped by to show us her rock treasures.
Sarah said HI.
I reminded her she was my daughter, Missy.
She laughed and said, “Hi Missy.”

Lobo took her with him to run his Saturday morning errands and I must confess, I was grateful for the break.
Ahhhh the quiet!

Later the three of us settled with popcorn and rented a movie, WATER FOR ELEPHANTS.
We were in bed by 11:00

SUNDAY NOVEMBER 13th
We took a 2 1/2 mile dog walk with Missy & Mark.
Sarah and I were ready to quit afterwards.

We came home had lunch and ran a few errands.
I suggested she take a shower and she agreed.

I could hear a loud conversation going on in the shower like there was a couple other people in there with her…..but there wasn’t but obviously in Sarah’s mind there was.

We watched the last 2 Harry Potter movies.

At dinnertime she wanted to help so I asked her to set the table.
It made me so sad to see what she did.
I tried to make some sort of sense of the pattern she set, but I couldn’t.
One spot had two plates and no utinsels.
She’d put a knife in a glass and layed one of the glasses on it’s side.
The napkins were kinda smushed-up and in the salad bowls and stacked on top of each other.

She repeated the same stories over and over and it was amazing how it actually sounded word for word like it was the first time she was telling each story.
After a while, I could tell those stories myself.

Most of what she talked about was her college days and her Paris trip.

She continued to ask every few minutes when her husband was coming, and then would verbalize anger toward him, wishing him bad weather wherever he was.
At one point, I tried to convince her to speak more kindly of him, but that only made her mad at me.
Went to bed at 10 p.m.

MONDAY NOVEMBER 14th
I don’t think she’d slept a full night in bed so far.
She seemed to just sit in the recliner and stare.
The bedroom lights were never turned off.
I heard her open her bedroom door numerous times during the night, maybe checking to see if anyone was up yet?
Our dogs somehow knew to let us know when she actually came out of her room.

We noticed she had favorite phrases like “never, never land.”
This seemed to be her way of covering up the fact that she could no longer remember the names of places so she called them all “never, never land.”

Melissa stopped by and the three of us went to my mom’s for a visit.
My mom was a little bit “crabby.”
After the visit, the three of us sat in the car and joked a bit about my crabby mom.
Sarah laughed with us and seemed to enjoy herself.

We went grocery shopping and I noticed by the time our day was over, she was speaking in way more sense-making sentences and remembering words she hadn’t been using.
All I could think was that maybe the stimulation was good for her.

She loved my 2 dogs and they seeed so extra attentive to her, like they knew.
I wish she had a dog.
They’re awesome therapy.

TUESDAY NOVEMBER 15
I didn’t hear Sarah out in the hallway at all that night.
Maybe I was so tired of sleeping light to make sure I heard her that I slept through it?

She appeared from her bedroom early morning fully dressed, hat and all but she had her nightgown over her clothes (hey…I see people walking around in their “pajamas” all day long….maybe she was just a bit ahead of the fashion times?)

I remember an evening in the ER when one of my docs and I were having an Alzheimer’s conversation.
I loved the quiet nights when we’d sit and talk.
He explained everything so well.
I wasn’t real familiar back then with the monster that it is.
He told me …..
”If you go to the refrigerator and stand there staring at it wondering what the heck did I come here to get …..that’s normal.
If you stand in front of the refrigerator and wonder….what is this??
THAT’S Alzheimer’s.”

I tried to help Sarah hold on to her dignity.

One morning at breakfast time, instead of sitting down at the table, Sarah walked around the kitchen.
She stared at the floor with an extremely confused look on her face and she paced.

I got the cereal bowl & spoon out, put them on the table and reached into the pantry for the cereal.
I had the feeling that Sarah wanted to help so I asked her to get the milk.
I watched her walk to the food pantry first and look around, the confused look remained on her face.
I pointed to the refrigerator and told her that’s where the milk was.
She walked over to the fridge but opened the freezer side and began looking.
I redirected her to the other door.
She opened it and began touching everything, obviously totally confused.
It was on the top shelf in plain sight like milk in almost anybody’s fridge.
I told her to look up at the top.
A moment later, she brought a container of fresh strawberries to the table.

It’s a very heart-breaking thing to watch happen knowing there’s absolutely nothing that can be done to save her.

Sarah liked to read the newspaper in the mornings with her cereal.
She would read out loud, slowly and softly, reminiscent of when we first began to read in grade school.

I would sit and listen to this once amazingly intelligent woman read the paper.
She was top of her class in high-school, received a Master’s Degree in college and went on to work for a very prominent corporation with an impressive title for over 30 years.
She ate healthy,wasn’t overweight, exercised regularly, didn’t smoke, drank a little wine and should have many years left on this planet but, those years will be a day to day struggle for a woman who has been raped of her memory.

My mom visited once a week from the Nursing Home to have lunch and spend the day with me.

Her transportation van pulled to a stop in front of our home.
Sarah and I walked out to greet her as the van’s lift mechanism was bringing her down to street level.
Hugs and kisses were exchanged.
We had lunch then took a walk around the neighborhood.
Sarah decided she needed to watch over my mom and push her motorized scooter.
It was battery operated, it didn’t need a pusher but she was determined to push her.
My mom had mastered manipulation of her Scooter days after she first got it.
She could turn sharp corners on two wheels.
She certainly didn’t need to be pushed. It really wasn’t made for pushing, but Sarah kept trying.
Later my mom confided in me that she was so afraid that she was gonna run over one of Sarah’s feet.
AND, that very well could have happened, my mom was a speed demon in that thing.

Later, when we said goodnight, I suggested Sarah get into bed and under the covers.
She said she does but I can tell she doesn’t.

WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 16
I think Sarah stays in her room all night just sitting in the chair, staring.
Tom told me she sleeps most of the day but that hadn’t been the case with us.
I watched her eyes close every now and then when she was sitting on the sofa but nothing near a nap.
I wondered if she didn’t sleep night after night…..how did she keep going?
She asked about Tom often every day….”where’s Miller? When’s Miller coming?”
One day while we were driving, I asked her about Tom, said she always seemed angry at him, she responded “Sometimes.”
I asked her if she liked him.
And another “Sometimes.”

I think back to the very first Nursing Home patient I ever cared for as a student nurse.
She was angry.
Very angry.
At me!!!
I’d never seen her before and I was crushed that she obviously wanted nothing to do with me.

I see that anger in Sarah toward Tom.
Sad.

She seemed very contented to sit in the living room with us and watch whatever we put on TV.
She loved candy.
Her favorite was a Three Muskateers Bar.

We bought a Costco-sized bag of Three Muskateer’s before she arrived.
I was thrilled that Snicker’s wasn’t her favorite.
Because if it had been then between Sarah and me, the bag would be all-the-time empty.
I only invaded the Three Muskateers bag once or twice a day.

When I handed her a couple small bars, it was like I was giving her the moon.
It sure made her happy.

She’d bonded tightly with my two dogs.
They followed her around all day and paid so much attention to her.

We all three went to bed at the same time every night.
I would set her timer for a two-hour auto TV shut-off.

I think she tried to make the clicker work after it went off.

And here, at this point, I gotta say…..I hate clickers!
I don’t understand them.
And I couldn’t work them any better than confused Sarah could.

Every day when she asked me to turn on her TV, it would first click on with some strange message about what must be done to get it working right!
I decided Sarah was a frustrated button pusher just as I was.
Between the two of us, we could really screw-up a TV clicker.

Tom sent a short Email just checking in, and letting us know how much he was enjoying his free time.

TO BE CONTINUED.