h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Zombie Death: Senile Dementia and Alzheimer's Disease

Even if we recognise the futility of wishing for an Ali McGraw death, I bet we all want to slip off in full possession of our mental faculties. That sentence I just wrote was unintentionally ironic, because when we die we don't take ANY possessions along, but if you don't have your mind, you don't have anything even before you die. The Demented Ones are the living dead of Ladera. Yes, there are special "lockdown" units for Alzheimer's patients, but there is no solid rule, apparently, in the medical profession, that causes a patient to reside here rather than there. In three cases I know of personally -- because I have gone to the nurses and asked why that person is still here -- the family doesn't want to relinquish their parent or spouse to the institution of last resort. There really is a stigma, still.

A meta-note: when I use a proper name, it's the person's real name, and I use it knowing that the patients or their guardians won't mind. Otherwise you'll get an initial.

My room mate Gretchen has MS and senile dementia. According to her brother, she has been like she is now since her 40's (she is 63 now) and for most of that time she has been institutionalised. It began with a traffic accident, the dementia; she already had the MS. I don't know more because it seems impolite to press for details. She has been here at Ladera for around 6 years. A large framed collage is on the wall behind her bed, detailing her late father's accomplishments (not least of which was surviving the Bataan Death March), and if you refer to it, she will say, "Yes, he is an interesting man." Her brother says they don't visit as often as they might, but that an hour after he's gone she doesn't remember the visit anyway.

Gretchen presents a friendly, compliant personality and is more stoical than I think the staff realize, and I have become rather protective of her, now that I know something of her likes and dislikes. It's no use feeling virtuous about sharing some chocolates, because she won't remember that it was I who gave them to her! She is happy to sit in her side of the room, in her wheelchair, and watch Animal Planet because she doesn't remember that she saw the same program three hours earlier or this time last week. But most of the time she is kept in the day room, because she's a fall risk, and allowing a patient to fall is one of the deadly sins at Ladera.

I had no control over where I was sent last year, when the hospital judged me to be sub-acute, but I think I'm lucky that it was Ladera. More about that, in future journals.

F sits in the day room all day and talks in a loud growly voice. Judging from his appearance, there has been major trauma to his head. They sit him near the television. You can hear his attention ricochet off the odd phrase he hears, but the rest is just stream of consciousness.

The compos mentis residents don't interact at all with the Demented Ones. There are plenty of relationships formed, or nodding acquaintances, among the rest of the residents who can leave their rooms, but not with the vacant-minded. We residents graciously tolerate each others' imperfections, the illnesses, the amputations, the prosthetic devices, anything but the puzzled flat-eyed stare of the living dead.

[Amy P]

That erosion of what makes a person "them" is such a sad thing. I watched it with my step-nan and my father-in-law, and it made me hope they didn't know what they'd become. My step-nan especially - she was such a good humoured, gentle woman and in dementia she because angry and abusive. She would have hated it.

Deb

[Mag]

[WM]

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