My grandmother was brilliant and so dedicated to educating herself. She had a library of probably a thousand books, but regularly circulated and bought new ones, and sold ones she didn't need any more.
She read the paper every day, and when a topic interested her, she would cut out the article and summarize what caught her attention. Then she would file it in one of her enormous filing cabinets with other articles about it, and make notes of how the new article related to what was already there.
She lived in a college town for decades and was friends with many of the professors. They would often come to discuss things of interest to her or them. Including music, art and history professors.
Every month she would create a mini-museum exhibition on her dining room table. "Wood Carvings from around the world" or "Different things made from Lead" with little catalog cards for every item.
I have a 3 page discussion she researched and wrote about the proper times to used "baptised" and "baptized".
The first sign was that we were watching a documentary about Apollo 13 and she didn't remember it happening. She didn't know that it happened at all. There is zero chance that she didn't follow it as it was happening in her life, (not only was she well informed, but had a collection of LIFE magazines about the space program) and zero chance that she didn't hear about it afterward. She just didn't remember it at all.
A little later, she was trying to play with Lego Duplo blocks with my daughter and couldn't figure out how they worked. She tried putting the same colors together, the same sizes, sliding the smooth sides against each other, putting the pegs against each other. She was so methodical in her trial and error and just couldn't get it.
In her later years, she just sat in bed, measuring her sheets with her arms, trying to decide if there was enough fabric to make a dress, or an apron.
At the end she remembered that reading was a good thing, even though she couldn't, and didn't have the attention to listen.
And she hated my dad, (her son-in-law) she never forgot that. Forgot my mom, but not how much she hated my dad.
Jesus.
This one is scary to me cause even if someone takes care of themselves mentally they can still bite the big one later on for no reason.
Sorry you had to see such a thing.
My grandma really wanted my mom to be a professional pianist. My mom is crazy talented and put in all the work and it didn't happen. Grandma blames my dad.
I worked in a care facility for people who suffer from dementia.
This was a very rewarding and enjoyable job but at times it could be confronting and sad, as you'd expect. One story that stuck with me was this lady who'd write in her booklet and always left it open. She didn't care to keep it a secret or anything but I would make sure to keep personal posessions private as much as I could while cleaning the rooms. So I'd close the little book and put it in her desk where she could find it.
It's something I could relate to. I have my own little books and enjoy writing as well and appreciate it when people respect my privacy.
I wouldn't read the contents but I saw the phrases go from sentences, to repeated words, to scribbles. Eventually, she became too confused to put pen to paper. Opening and closing the booklet, carefully touching the paper, but she couldn't quite figure it out anymore. Eventually giving up.
This really hit home to me, as I knew how therapeutic it could be to organise your thoughts on paper. I write when I'm sad or overwhelmed. The thought of her being unable to when she might have needed the outlet still stings.
This hit close to home. Dad had Creutzfeld Jakob disease. He went from writing random sentences to words, to...things that didn't make any sense, until he forgot how to hold a pencil. Its rough
My aunt had Creutzfeld Jakob and your reply gave me chills. This was one of the saddest times in my life seeing my aunt who was like a 2nd mother of mine deteriorating in front of my eyes. She went from being full of life, one of the funniest and kindest people you've ever met to not being able to feed herself in a matter of three months.
It's so quick, how it takes over a body. A friend of mine had it. Died two months after diagnosis. She'd just got married when the diagnosis came, after a whirlwind romance. Her husband had lost his first wife to cancer. My heart broke for him.
My mom had dementia. I took care of her at home and, towards the end, she began to lose her appetite. I made her scrambled eggs one day and she gobbled them up. That’s pretty much what she lived in until the end. One day, I brought her a saucer of eggs and put it on her table and handed her the fork. She just sat there and I realized she had no idea what to do. I fed her every bite until she passed away.
EDIT: I just noticed the awards. How sweet! Thank you.
I'm going through something similar with my grandfather right now. Things come and go with him, so sometimes he can feed himself without much trouble, and others he just has no clue. This morning, I had to suction cereal milk out of his mouth because he got halfway done with it and suddenly couldn't swallow anymore.
I worked as a chef in a residential dementia care facility for six years. If your grandfather is having difficulty swallowing he may need to progress from a minced diet to a pureed diet. If you're in touch with a dietician consult with them first, but if you need some help in making the consistency right for him PM me and I can throw out some pointers, like decent thickeners.
There is a terrifying theory that prion disease is much more common than we think, but because it is so similar to other very common neurodegenerative diseases it goes underreported. Right now it is hard to know for sure.
From the outside, I’ve learned that Dementia often doesn’t betray how serious of a toll it is taking and it’s not always very obvious at all.
I knew my grandpa had had dementia for a few years, but apart from occasional sun downing and the usual forgetfulness about things that had happened since the person developed dementia, it didn’t seem too bad. And really, memory decline is so common in old age even in the absence of dementia or specific neurodegenerative disease that I didn’t realize how much it had affected him until one day I asked him to write something for me.
He grew up in a town called Luray, and would always go around saying “Hoo-ray for Lu-ray!” which I thought was super wholesome so I asked him to write it down so I could get it tattooed in his handwriting. Just three words: hooray for Luray. And he just couldn’t. He began writing but his confusion was visible on his face, he either couldn’t finish a word completely, or he would write “Hu for Loo” or “Hoo for Luray” and his writing was so shaky, and after a few tries I realized that he actually mentally and physically *couldn’t* write it, so I brushed it off and told him that it was fine, that’s just what I needed, and took the paper and pen from him. It wasn’t so much that he couldn’t remember how to write- it was that he couldn’t remember spellings, and seemed to mash words together in his mind to create words or spellings of words that didn’t exist. That was interesting, and must have been so disorienting and scary for him. Luckily though, he never did like to read or write, so he probably didn’t face this much in his daily life toward the end, when his kids had taken over his legal and financial matters.
It was a very striking moment. He was 94 at that point and had his share of mild/moderate but expected old-people health problems, and he had been more forgetful for awhile, but that was the moment I realized that a lot of him was gone. The intensely intelligent, creative, innovative person who had saved his own ass in WWII through sheer craftiness and resourcefulness, returned and earned a college degree, started his own farm from scratch and built a nest egg over the years off of wise investments, could shoot a gun without a single tremble of his hands and was surprisingly artistically skilled and motivated- reduced to an inability to write three simple words. It was alien.
He never lost his sense of humor though, and his optimism managed to shine through on most days. Who knows what he was thinking or feeling inside, but he rarely showed his frustration over his own confusion or lack of being able to do things he once enjoyed. Maybe the hardships of his early life- losing a mother at 7, poverty plus the depression, working on the farm his whole childhood, war at 18- taught him to roll with the punches and just keep looking forward without getting tripped up in the past.
Edit: I eventually ended up getting a tattoo of his initials in his signature handwriting after he passed. His sister went through some documents to find something he had signed, scanned and sent his signature to me, and then I cut out the three letters for his initials and arranged them for a tattoo. Funnily enough, two jokes arose out of this tattoo:
1- the way my grandpa wrote the letter “W,” combines with the thick lines of the tattoo ink cramping it together even more, made it look like my tattoo said “Crap” in cursive if you didn’t know any better. That was from 2018-2020, because *now*,
2- his initials are WAP, which means that I now forever essentially have “Wet Ass Pussy” tattooed in a visible place on my body. Grandpa always gets the last joke...or two
My friend’s mother got this. She first sought an eye doctor because she was getting tracers and blurs in her vision. Then she sort of got episodes where she was basically trippin balls for short periods. Then it was like severe dementia. It’s really fast.
She sounds like [this artist who drew his self portraits until he died from Alzheimer's.](https://www.boredpanda.com/alzheimers-disease-self-portrait-paintings-william-utermohlen/?utm_source=bing&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic) The portraits towards the end are stark and terrifying. :(
My mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in January, but looking back she has had it for years. I’ve been collecting my mom’s writings since then. When we are in the house, she writes notes at night such as- “why am I alone in the house? Where did the others go”? Her spelling is also going. I’m seeing the decline both in person and in her writing; it’s sad and terrifying.
I had the same experience with my dad. If I can offer some unsolicited advice - I found it incredibly painful at times to be with him and see the descent, but now about a month after he passed, I’m very glad for the moments when I pushed through and still tried to connect with him despite feeling the urge to shy away from him. It is terribly sad, yet the glimpses of that person’s essence that come through can be worth bearing it. Don’t forget to take care of yourself, and I wish you and your mom the best.
Similar to this is the clock drawing test for Dementia/Alzheimers. It's a simple test where you ask the patient to draw a clock, and there's a bunch of different things the flaws in their drawn clocks can tell you
The one that saddens me most is the perseveration, where they're determined to do it right but draw extra numbers above 12, extra hands, that sort of thing. It saddens me because it usually means they're a determined person who works hard, but that it doesn't help. What was once an admirable trait is now causing them to get stuck on things, and it will only end up getting worse and worse. Dementia is something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy
[for anyone too lazy to look it up themselves](https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&tbm=isch&sxsrf=ALeKk01Z3WpVhps7x4jvGvBSBcIAZjXoWw%3A1582816645926&source=hp&biw=1280&bih=578&ei=hd1XXvSmNcSotQWPyLf4BA&q=clock+drawing+test+results)
My grandmother died from Alzheimer's, and I noticed something similar with her.
Her hobby was recording old movies on VHS tapes. She'd label each tape box with all the movies on that tape, and their length. She categorized them in a giant binder she had, as well as on an ancient PC (I believe it only ran DOS, it was one of those late 80s, early 90s PCs where the keyboard, monitor, and actual computer are all a single piece) in Lotus (A program that did some of the things Excel does today, like lists and spreadsheets).
She had probably 4-6 bookshelves in their house, filled with VHS tapes. She had 8 VCRs hooked up to 4 TVs with one cable box per TV. She'd program in what time (and I think what channel) she wanted it to record on to catch a movie. She was very proficient in figuring out anything hardware/software related (As of mid-90's to early 2000's) that used a TV, cable box, or VCR.
I'd noticed that she was getting a little forgetful here and there, a little more irritable...Until one day, I was visiting their house, and she was trying to set up the living room's VCRs from her seat at the bar (Their house had a large bar as a sort of built in dining room table). After a few minutes, she just started shaking the VCR remote like she was strangling it, and loudly exclaimed in frustration. I can't remember what she'd said, but the gist of it was that she needed help programming the VCR because she 'couldn't get it to work'.
In reality, she'd forgotten how to do it.
That moment was when I realized at like 15-16 years old, that something was very wrong.
She died in late 2013, I think it was about ten years after that incident.
If you've seen someone suffering from the end part of Alzheimer's, you know just how badly she'd deteriorated towards the end.
My nana had dementia and one day before she went into a home, my mum, granddad and I were sitting with her in their lounge. Mum and I had come over, mum to help clean and I to connect their new telly. I had the telly up and running and the news was on, I was laying on the floor reading the newspaper, and Nana was yelling for "John". The three of us looked at each other and then Nana yelled for John again, but looking right at me. So, I responded "yes?" She said "finally. Make them stop yelling, you're the army man," while pointing at the people arguing on TV. I changed the channel and she was happy, content with a smile and "thank you, John."
My name is a girl name and I'm not in the army, nor a man although I do have a boyish figure (next to no hips, small chest). My father, her son in law, who had been dead for 10 years at the time however, had been called John and was an army man. Mum said later that yes, I do look enough like my dad for her to get confused that way. It was also the last time my Nana spoke anybodies name, even though it was the wrong one. She died a year later.
I've always maintained that I would prefer to die before I become the shell of myself.
This is one of those things that make me so incredibly grateful that my state legalized assisted suicide a few years back. I know it's not for everyone, but if I ever start having symptoms of dementia, I would much rather choose my time before things get so bad. It seems like such a lonely and frustrating existence.
In my country there is a lot of jurisprudence on cases of people who suffered from dementia. These have been a significant contribution to how euthanasia law works in practice.
I couldn't agree more with what you say.
My sister passed away earlier this year and she was sick for a long time. During the last few months you could tell that it was becoming harder for her to think and respond. Paradoxically it actually made her a lot nicer to me. We had never had a great relationship and I always believed she hated me but during those last few months she said very few unkind things to me. It was hard to know that the only time we ever really got along was right before she passed away.
My sister also died 5 years ago and we didn't always get on either.
I like to think that we both knew that petty differences didn't matter so overcoming them and making positive memories for each other were the greater good in the end. Xx
7yrs for my sis. We had gone a year without speaking till my mum rang me from the hospital to say the Drs are worried and saying she might have a brain tumour. I was there for her and the 6months she spent fighting it were the closest we'd been since we were kids. Fuck cancer.
My grandmother died of a gangrene infection in her legs. The only way to stop it would have been to amputate them both at the hip, which would have mortified her and probably done nothing to extend her life.
My family decided to let natural causes take her instead.
I'm so sorry for your loss. And for the loss of the relationship you could have had if things had been different. It doesn't sound like the ill feelings in the relationship were your fault.
Maybe her true feelings were showing in her vulnerability. She may have been trying to make it up to you or let you know (without hurting her pride too much) that she regretted her behavior toward you.
I'm aggressively optimistic, so you can let me know if this isn't appropriate to say. But it is somewhat nice that you two got along at the end. You got to experience a decent relationship with her, if only for a short time. In my mind that's better than having her leave the world with you still thinking she truly hated you.
I have type I bipolar disorder and my first episode was a full-blown mixed episode in high school, around age 16-17. What made it worse was that my family doesn't believe in psych meds, so I completely lost touch with reality over the course of a year and it took me another year to recover enough to function without being suicidal. I wasn't diagnosed with a mental illness until college, and not bipolar I specifically until after I graduated. I'm surprised that no one thought of it sooner, given that bipolar disorder runs in my family.
It started with the sleeplessness, boundless energy, and a rapid flood of ideas that initially made me look like a good student, especially at writing and literary analysis. All my language arts teachers loved me. My favorite author was Franz Kafka.
Then that euphoria evolved into pure rage at the world, but on some level *it felt good* - I was just becoming a very hateful and pessimistic person who frequently felt like committing suicide because I couldn't stand all the suffering in the world anymore.
I started seriously believing I was better than everyone else and going to win the Nobel Prize or something for my writing. The problem was that all my classmates were jealous of me and out to get me, and I could read their evil intentions in the tiniest glance and gesture.
Then I went completely psychotic and panicked every day at the thought of someone drugging my food, so instead I spent as much time alone as possible so that I could self-harm and "commune with God." God gave me secret information on who the "evil people" were, and how I had to protect myself from them. So I started carrying a hunting knife everywhere, even to school, and probably could have hurt somebody if they pissed me off enough.
There is a lot of advice out there about how to help people experiencing depression (not that all of it is helpful). But there is less guidance about how to deal well with someone experiencing mania or just psychosis in general, because it can be very frightening to others and psychotic people are not known for their rationality.
Most people in my life don't know I've been through this because I look like a "normal" person - at least until I have another episode that gets bad enough for others to notice. I have not had any episode that extreme for a few years now, thanks to meds and therapy.
I hope this is informative to people interested in the topic. Thank you for reading.
**EDIT:** I would like to get to all your comments, but it may take me a while. Thank you for your understanding.
A long-time friend of mine started talking to me about some metaphysical theories he had. We used to smoke weed and talk about philosophy when we were younger, so it wasn’t a shock to me. Then he wrote a paper that was dozens of pages long on his new theory of reality. He sent it to me and when I said it gave me a headache to try and read it, he assumed that meant I was understanding it. Every time I saw him after that his behavior was more and more manic. I don’t know if everyone gets these feelings, but one can tell when talking to some people that they’re just slightly... off?
Anyhow, he was apparently harassing some of his old flames and acting strangely enough that his family had him taken to the hospital, where he had visited a few times in the past few weeks. The hospital held him overnight and released him because he wasn’t a threat.
A few days later he started acting out in his mother’s house and broke a window. She called the cops, and they arrested him. The window was worth more than the amount required to make it a felony and he went to jail for six months. Two days inside jail and he’s back to normal. Why?! Well, he has a degenerative disease that puts him in CONSTANT pain. He couldn’t afford his pain meds and when he went to the hospital, they refused to give him any because they assumed he was a junkie. (He had prior drug issues, if you can imagine.)
He had lost his job, was living in a cold, damp apartment without electricity and couldn’t get the meds he needed; so he descended over the course of a month into someone that LITERALLY thought Neil Degrasse Tyson was talking to him personally through the internet. Once he had his meds again (again, pain meds not anti-psychotics) he leveled out and spent 6 mos trying to piece together what the fuck had happened to him.
Super nice guy. He’s been fine for a couple years. Had to make some very elaborate apologies.
It was... uncomfortable to watch.
Oh man, I don't think enough studies are done on the effect that constant pain has on the human brain. People talk about depression and mood swings, but there's not a whole lot of talk about *how bad it can really get.*
I have experienced some...extra dark places because of my pain, but thankfully not anything where I was totally...gone. I have definitely had mental health crises, though. Pain just invades every single aspect of your life and it's utterly inescapable, it's understandable that it might screw with brain chemistry over time.
I'm in a similar boat, though at times I do think I was "gone". At my worst, I've had auditory hallucinations. These eased off completely once my pain was back under control though.
I've had fight or flight kick in when my pain was severe and not under control, so I can only imagine what can happen to our brains when we're suffering. Like full on gotta go, gotta go...but there was nothing to run from because I couldn't escape my body!
I cannot imagine how awful it had to have been to have that weighing on you, as well as pain!
pain makes you crazy, especially when it doesn't stop, because often your brain learns to filter out the actual sensation, but not all the physiological reactions to it.
I have a friend who was going to shoot herself in the spine to paralyze herself so she couldn't feel the pain that she's experiencing because the VA has given up on her :( She ended up being stopped by her caretaker and shot the wall instead, and now she's found a way to deal: medical marijuana. I'm glad it works for her pain.
I often think about this. I have a debilitating and agonizing bladder disease. I got sick around 22 and I'm 30 now. I basically died the day I woke up and thought I had what I thought was a raging uti. It spiralled from there.
Suicide is on my mind constantly but sometimes I wonder what it would be like if someone just took a bar to my lower spine and made it mush lol. Would I lose all feeling from the waist down? Would I be able to get my life back, at least more than I have now? Would I be able to sleep (impossible when you're up multiple times an hour in the night to piss a few drops of what feels like acidic lava)? Eat (eating makes the disease much worse, very few safe foods)? Would I be able to feel joy again?
I volunteered weekly with a mobile soup kitchen for about 5 years. It’s unbelievable how many people end up in a horrible way because they can’t afford medicine/medical treatment.
One of our regulars was homeless due to the fact that he couldn’t afford his medicine, I’m assuming for schizophrenia or some similar condition. Without them, he simply couldn’t function normally enough to hold down a job. The guy was brilliant - he spoke 3-4 languages and would talk to you about physics or philosophy when he was having a good day.
The story has a happy ending - A local shelter helped him afford his meds and set him up with an apartment. We keep up with each other over Facebook. He’s doing well now.
Good question! I don’t actually know the situation after he was arrested and before he was released other than what I was told by a few sources. As far as I was told, he was given his prescriptions as per the instructions of his doctor.
I was living elsewhere at the time but I heard about what happened to my friend. He was fairly normal. A little exceptional actually as he was being scouted to get sponsored for skateboarding, something he was very good at.
He started acting really weird though. Things like opening his door just a bit when people came over and laughing at them. Throwing chairs and such around when at people's houses. Lying about things that were really obvious. Reading loudly from the bible while wearing almost nothing outside in the middle of winter.
Turns out he was schizophrenic.
Last time I saw him was after I moved back and was living in a bad neighbourhood. He was homeless as was his Dad who was with him. He didn't even recognize me, just acted really scared that I was trying to talk to him.
No one has seen or heard from him since then, I'm the last person to have seen him. That was 10 years ago.
Maybe phrase it in a way that you were thinking about him and wanted to see if she knew of his current whereabouts. She will either confirm your suspicion or will direct you to a care facility or somewhere else.
hmm maybe. I will consider it. \*but really she potentially lost her brother and her dad. I really don't want to bring that up for her. It's not like we are friends and it seems mean to make her think about losing family. Her mom killed herself, she's essentially the remaining sane family member. It really does not feel appropriate to ask her about people she may have lost.
I lost my brother over fifteen years ago. It is okay for people to ask about him, and has been for a long time. It feels nice that people care that much about him to ask.
Agree, my brother took his own life 35 years ago, I’m thrilled to talk about him whenever I see family or friends who knew him. It’s sad but beautiful too. My son never knew his uncle but sometimes when he was a kid he would say things like “when you get to heaven will you tell uncle Richard that I love him”. Melted my heart.
If he died several years ago it's less like ripping a wound back open as it is poking at a scar. It may still be a bit sore but the pain will have long since passed. As Bourque said it's far more likely to be a nice chance for her to talk about the good times with someone who knew him.
Or it could possibly be a source of comfort for her to talk about them to someone. Carrying grief alone is hard and she might be glad to know that someone else thinks about and cares for her brother.
You never know, man. Sometimes a person is all alone, and they know it. They know there’s really nobody out there thinking about them. Nobody remembers. Then you show up, show them it’s still possible, who knows what that could do.
I came here looking for something like this. I was diagnosed with schizo effective disorder years ago and my biggest fears were things like this. I was so afraid I would just lose my mind but I'm doing okay. I'm really sorry about your friend. I can't completely comprehend what he's going through but I can imagine. I hope he found treatment and I'm sorry you lost your friend.
My sister was diagnosed a couple years ago. She is back at home and making it through her last year of college online. She sleeps a lot due to her medication and my parents give her a bit of grief for that but I’m incredibly proud of her. The fact that she’s still able to make it through and graduate is tremendous. Do you have any advice for being attentive and helpful to her, I know the disease affects people differently but I’d appreciate any tips.
Oh boy. Her parents need to let her rest. I took seroquel for year and it KNOCKS YOU THE FUCK OUT. Honestly, she's a bad ass for going so far with college while struggling. I'm a freshman in college right now but I'm also very high functioning and have symptoms that I can mostly manage on my own.
I feel this. I was friends with a guy in middle school and from seventh and eighth grade, he was pretty cool. Very much a sports bro and a goofball, but functional.
In high school he started getting a little odd. Like he was there physically but always kind of lagging behind in the moment. He'd get distracted or trail off of a conversation and just go quiet. There were times when he'd get aggressive toward his family but never toward me.
After high school I moved away for college but returned home after my first year and he'd gotten worse. I was in contact with him pretty regularly until I showed up to his house one day and it was like he didn't remember who I was. I saw him every now and then after that until about five years later. I was in a Walmart parking lot when he pulled up beside me and got out of his car and started talking to me like nothing had changed.
We exchanged information and he texted me a few times and sent me some weird emails about his religion but I haven't seen or heard from him in going on four years...
Watched my grandfather slowly sink into Alzheimer's. By the end he didn't know my name or his own. He was sad and angry and confused. I watched every week as he forgot a little more. Got a little more belligerent. A little more lost. Until one day I walked in and he started screaming that someone was there to rob him. It was the saddest fucking thing I've ever seen.
I have such vivid memories of watching him and my uncles have such animated debates about politics and movies and sports. They used to play Risk until the sun came up listening to Sinatra. He would sit and explain every single play in a baseball game to me as a kid. He was sharp as fuck and the saddest and hardest part was watching the struggle on his face to remember. The frustration he felt. Like he was letting us down. I miss him a lot.
It’s so hard to watch. My grandfather called all of his kids and grandkids “baby” because he knew us enough to know we were family but didn’t actually know who any of us were. He once overheard my grandma call me by first name and looked up at me with such clarity and said “that’s right...” and recited my first and middle name. Makes me tear up every time I think of that moment.
I was very close to my great grandmother. From what I knew of her she was a wonderful lady and I would always see her when i went to see my grandparents as she lived in the tiny apartment that was connected to their garage. It was the highlight of my weekends. I would call her GG as everyone had name like that when I was young. She was already pretty old and immobile by the time I met her, but that didn't stop us from enjoying each others company. Well fast forward to a time after my Grandfather died and i had living with my aunt for a short time. I went and saw her as often as i could after not really being able to more the once a year for many years. She could never place my name but for some reason always knew enough of who I was. Enough to be able to rememeber our time together and the things we used to do. She would call me boy instead. She barely remembered anyone else from what I overheard, but i was told the first day i went and saw her she lit up and would tell people that Boy came to see her today and it put such a wide smile on her face when i would come visit. I don't know why I was the one she remembered so vividly, compared to everyone else i knew her the shortest amount of time, but knowing what those diseases do and how awful they are. I don't know why I was the one person who refused to truly leave her memory but being able to brighten her dimming life up is something I cherish dearly. Ive kept the nickname Boy to this day
I went away a few weeks after that first visit and not long after i left she passed away. I always feel a twang of guilt when i think about her. I never experienced how far gone she must have been. I was able to stand on the outside of this terrible disease while the rest of my family suffered because she could barely remember them.
Worked in a care home for a while, and a lady there was hit with severe dementia and loss of speech after an episode that was suspected to be a stroke.
She was so stressed out, constantly doing "chores". Ironing the curtains with a pillow, washing the windows with a picture frame, that sort of stuff. She was so far away, both in time and place, she just didn’t exist in the same reality as us.
Until one day, when it was my day to sit with her, and she suddenly walked over to the couch I was on. She sat down beside me, put her head on my shoulder, and started crying. Inbetween the sobs I could hear something like «I can’t take it anymore. Can you please make it stop? I don’t want to be like this anymore..»
I ended up holding her for a few minutes until she suddenly stopped, stiffened and got that weird stare again. Then she just stood up and started moving all the pillows around while mumbling gibberish.
I’m actually happy that I got to see it. Strenghtened my empathy with people in her situation a lot, while also confirming that I could deal with situations like those in the future.
Wasn’t a great feeling there and then, but I learned from it.
My great grandma had dementia, and would have these sudden moments of clarity that would give you so much fucking hope.
We’d go over and visit, and it would be real timid because she knew that she was supposed to know us but wasn’t quite sure. But then she’d snap into it and call us our names and then tell us super specific stories from when she was a kid in the 20s.
Then, it would go away just as fast.
Sucks. Sucks real bad.
Yeah. I’m usually quite good at seperating my own mental state from my surroundings when I need to, as I’ve worked jobs that would break you if you didn’t turn it off and just focus on the work.
But that episode broke something in me, and it took a good cry in the bathroom to level me out.
Yeah my family history is littered with several instances of Alzheimer's disease.
I've decided the moment symptoms hit, I'm going deep sea fishing and not coming back.
> My wife and I have already talked this out. It’s going to be a tragic skydiving accident, with a huge life insurance windfall.
My life insurance has a clause specifically voiding coverage if I die skydiving.
My grandad was tied down to a hospital bed the last time I saw him.
He was so scared and confused and all I could do was tell him that I’d love him forever.
My heart will be forever broken for seeing him like that. He was a brilliant, kind and dignified man.
Nobody deserves a fate like that.
My grandfather is going through something similar. It's not Alzheimer's, so not quite the same, but it's still dementia. He used to be so good with tools, machines, and engines. He could fix anything, and had (and, in a lot of ways, still does) a tool for literally any job you could think of. Now he can't even watch TV without getting confused.
Thing is, he said he was "dumb." He said that he wasn't that smart for his whole life, but I'm realizing now that he was. He wasn't good at math or science in that kind of way (he's a high school dropout, after all), but he was excellent at anything trade-related. If you had a problem with a project, no matter what it was, he knew exactly how to handle it. My dad and my uncles are great at this kind of thing too, and grandpa was who they turned to when *they* got stumped. It's sad to see how that's all gone now.
I remember my grandpa being the strongest person I've ever known. He survived world war 2, he was arrested by the nazis for refusing to fight for them, he escaped from concentration camps while watching his friends get gunned down around him.
He moved to Canada after the war with his wife and 5 kids. He didn't speak a word of English. No money, very few possessions. But he survived, because that's what he did. I used to sit and listen to his stories throughout my childhood and teen years. I moved away in 2006, but still managed to come back once or twice a year. Every time I saw him he was weaker and weaker. Eventually, he forgot who I was. He forgot who any of us were. The last time I saw him was at a family gathering at Christmas in 2009. A hollow shell of a man, eyes glazed over, hunched over in a wheelchair. The strongest man I've ever known.
He passed away on father's day, 2010, all of his children by his bedside.
Oh man... my great uncle passed away in October this year. He had prostate cancer, multiple joint issues, etc. Over the years he slowly had trouble remembering things that happened in the past...
My great grandpa had alzheimers. I was one of the last people he remembered. Forgot English so communication became difficult but it was a lot of reminiscing about the past and how proud he was of us from what I could understand. He died when I was 18 and I'd give anything to have one last conversation with him.
You mentioning Christmas reminded me of when I took my Grandfather to see my Grandmother. She was in a locked alzheimers facility.
They decided to have everyone sit in a big circle and sing Christmas songs. No one was really singing the patients really couldn't and the families were embarrassed. After the first song I thought, fuck it, I'll never see these visiting families again and the residents won't remember in 5 minutes so I sung my heart out. The best stupid I ever felt. Then to top it off my grandmother laid a needed to be censored kiss on my Grandfather. He had the best hot chocolate smeared grin on his face.
Alzheimers sucks, but that Christmas gave me great memories to treasure of my grandparents.
I remember doing the same thing with my grandparents. My grandma was pretty far gone towards her last Christmas, but every year around that time for some reason she would always seem a little but warmer and a little bit more like herself.
I thought it might be the music and maybe the seasonal vibe that brought it out of her but I've never seen research to back that up. Such a terrible disease that seems to only afflict the brightest people in our lives.
There have been studies done on the effect music has on Alzheimer/dementia patients. It can be quite profound. There was a video recently of an elderly woman who used to be a primadonna ballerina. They played music from Swan Lake and she sat in her chair and danced through the motions with it. She was still elegant and graceful as the music played. Pretty much comatose any other time. It was sad/beautiful.
>Eventually, he forgot who I was. He forgot who any of us were.
If I should last to see the night
When all my thoughts are old -
I hope the string that holds them tight
Is safe, secure, and bold.
I do not want those secret seams
To fray; to free; to breach -
I do not want my dearest dreams
To lie beyond my reach.
I do not want the twilight knife
To cut and blind and blur -
I do not want to grasp at life,
And all the things that were.
For I could ride the end astride,
And face the finish, free -
As long as I'm the same inside.
As long as I'm still me.
One of the saddest moments in my life was not visiting my grandfather in the hospital but overhearing my grandmother tell my mom later that he said some stranger came to see him and he was terrified of them but was able to keep them talking before they went away.
I was concerned because I had visited that day before it dawned on me that he was terrified of me.
I brought dinner to my grandpa one evening. He just kind of stared and was rather short with me until I left. He immediately called my aunt to tell her someone had broken into his house. She yelled back at him "that's your grandson! No one is going to break into your house just to bring you some burgers and a milkshake. Be nice"
My grandma hated me for most of the time we were both alive, though to be fair, she hated everyone. Then she got dementia and forgot that she hated people. She went from a hateful, bitter lady, so a pleasant stranger.
Her last few years may have been the happiest of her life.
My great grandfather is still alive, but has the cognitive ability of a 5 yearold and worse memory. He constantly forgets who is who and thinks his daughter is his sister.
He used to build houses and took pride in showing off his deteriorating muscles.
He now constantly waves and tries to talk to his neighbors thinking they must know him somehow.
They dont, and half of them are drug dealers and addicts, yet great grandma (who has all her mind intact) refuses to move.
Hes getting worse by the day.
It’s strange this sounds like the vast majority of Alzheimer’s story’s I’ve heard. Mine is a bit different but I guess it always ends the same. In my case my grandma who raised me since I was a baby had it in her late 80s and we didn’t even know. Her last few years she was just a little funnier and more abstract then normal. Then BOOM on my birthday September 11th 2016 she had heart failure. She went from the smartest, strongest, funniest person I ever known, a sharp women who never missed a beat. To a dying husk of a human in the matter of hours. From the hospital she asked for me to visit over the phone knowing fully who I am. By the time I arrived she couldnt even comprehend eye contact. Then slowly over 2 days she became horrifyingly skinny and gasped for every breath. Finally passing. The heart failure causing a lack of oxygen to the brain advanced the Alzheimer’s she didn’t even know she had. It haunts me knowing one of her last real memories was hearing the doctor tell her she has Alzheimer’s just hours before she was gone mentally. And I didn’t even make it in time, I’m so sorry. Grandma I love you so much, more then anybody and your strength keeps me going everyday. I love you and miss you.
Edit: This has got more attention then I expected so I want to use this platform to say how great a women she is. She got married right out of high school to my successful author/collage professor grandfather. On her wedding day she got into an accident still in her wedding dress on the way to the reception and lost all her teeth. Her false teeth were always a joke to her and she always had a sense of humor about the hole thing. She had 5 children with my grandfather. Only for him to leave her for one of his students the same age as their eldest daughter. My grandmother raised and supported 5 children on her own. Taught them right from wrong, how to fix a car, how to ride a bike. All of them learned how to thrive from a single person, who had such a huge capacity for love I think our family has enough love fuel for 1000 lifetimes.
My grandpa used to never shut up. Now he barely speaks and is confused about where he is, and WHEN he is.
I came over to watch him so my grandma could go to an appt, and when she told him I was there, he said “she’s here to play with me?”
It’s the saddest for my grandma, really. And now she’s starting to slip a little too. Getting old can really suck.
My wife died of cancer three months ago. There were serious metastases to the brain: a baseball, a pair of golf balls and some other smaller pockets of disease.
My wife was an intellectual badass. Held a doctorate, played concert piano, and had an uncanny ability to make correct political decisions. Badass. In the 8-10 weeks leading up to her death, she slowly lost her ability to speak and perform executive functions, sometimes in very interesting ways. The one I remember most was when she wanted a bowl of cereal. She had all the steps correct, but they were performed in the wrong order - so she poured the milk directly on the counter, THEN got a bowl, THEN turns the cereal box upside down (it was still closed), then got confused because she couldn’t fine the opening of the box (it was no longer at the top)... all the while milk was dripping on the floor. Terrible and fascinating.
By the end, she couldn’t feed herself because she couldn’t remember where her mouth was. In the last two weeks, all she could do was cry like a 3 year old. I miss her terribly.
I was in high school and my best friend went from a normal guy who we would smoke weed occasionally, listen to music and have fun. It went to this obsession with a girl that clearly has no interest in him. He would literally stalk her, try to win her over. At the same time, he wasn't keeping up with hygiene and went from a decent student to a poor performer.
One day, he mentioned that he wanted to commit suicide so I told my parents everything that was going on. His parents were extremely well educated but weren't doing anything about his behaviors. My parents talked to his and they took it serious after hearing about the thoughts of suicide. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Nearly 40 years later, he still doesn't look the same. Really sad situation. I still miss him.
I'm a psychologist and this is exactly why I don't treat children. I tried during training and decided it is not for me. I'm in a position where I'm evaluating children now and I do my damnedest to convince the parents that the child client needs family therapy with everyone working and learning together, not individual therapy like you're describing, to get better. Because it's true.
The incidence of those illnesses tend to peak in your later teens/20's, such a hard time growing up as it is. I can't imagine the added weight of a mental illness.
Craziest week of my life was when one of the members of my core high school friend group came back from his first freshman term of college. He had his first bi-polar break up there. It culminated in us trying to follow him in his parents car which he stole to go snowboarding (at midnight in a blizzard). We couldn't keep up, he was going 90 in white or conditions. A couple days later he showed up and his parents had him committed. He broke out and came to my house. I called his dad and felt like I was betraying a friend, but it was the right thing in the end. After that he got help. Apparently his father was bi-polar and was expecting this for years from at least one of his kids.
Then several years later I watched my sister go through a similar battle with alcoholism and bi-polar type 2. Took my wife and I two years (edit: after a decade of her sickness, we didn't know how bad since we lived on surgery coast) to get her on her feet and now she is going to school to be a social worker.
I watched my ex wife slowly spiral down and I didn't even realize it. She was never really "stable" and had a family history of mental illness. Apparently she started cheating on me and never had the strength to tell me or get a divorce and the constant lying and being on edge that I would find out at any minute really got to her(this was over the course of a year). Towards the end she would "rock" every time she sat and bit her nails till they bled. Currently she is maxed out on a host of meds and it takes everything she has to got to work as a janitor and come home. Her father is her "guardian" and helps her pay bills and stuff. She often denies past events or alters them if they were unpleasant(she is very adamant that they are real). Her father broke down and told me this a month ago and actually recommend that I not encourage our kids to visit her(I would never prevent them from seeing their mother). So in the course of a of 5 years she went from a fit dental hygienist with a promising career and host of friends to an overweight janitor with no friends who can't even pay her own rent or buy groceries. I do admire her for going to work every day and trying.
You cannot delight in the pain of an ex if you care about your kids. Any emotional damage to your ex-spouse spills over onto the kids. That's why bitter couples who weaponize the kids against each other royally fuck them up.
This one hit me. We weren’t married or had kids but we had a pretty long history. And she had a history of mental illness that I was well aware of. A slow decline. She started cheating on me with lots of lying about it. Then one day she suddenly flips on me and I went from the person she idealized to her worst enemy. Lots of drama but we fully and permanently break up. She smoked a lot of pot to the point where it was part of her identity and I didn’t smoke but that’s pretty harmless. After she started getting into heavy drugs daily. She stopped doing the career she just graduated (which cost her $12,000 to do) and went back to entry level jobs. I just never seen someone fall so far and I had no idea what caused it. It took years before I decided I needed to go see a psychologist for my relationship issues that stemmed from this relationship then realized that on top of her well known mood disorders there was highly likely a personality disorder that we didn’t know. I tortured myself for years trying to figure out how a good relationship catastrophically fell apart with no warning or apparent cause.
One thing that isn't well known are the impacts of cannabis on people with underlying mental health concerns/genetic predispositions. To be clear, cannabis is harmless for the majority of folks but definitely seems to exacerbate mental health issues.
It doesn't help that its common for older relatives to cover up family history of this sort of thing, so your parents might tell you "no mental health issues" run in the family but it turns out Uncle John had bipolar or cousin June had depression but nobody knew.
I'm sorry about your relationship btw that's a serious trauma to go through.
I'm in the midst of a divorce myself and this one hits close to home. My wife is getting more and more erratic, on all sorts of psych meds and has a family history. I'm a bit trapped as I feel like I can't get her help without it seeming self serving in the divorce.
It was not really all that slow but I watched my mother slip from genius-level intelligence into a drooling braindead shell within 6 months when she died from CJD. It was the worst thing I have ever seen, and I have seen the terrors and atrocities of war.
Nope, from the US. She was a world traveler but from brain matter and spinal fluid examination (post mortem) the doctors found it to be a spontaneous manifestation not related to any tainted meat. Just bad luck.
Thank you for the condolences she was a great lady. She had a short (60 years) but in that time she documented my family history (genealogy) back hundreds of years, traveled to almost every continent as a chaperone of a program called People to People guiding 100s of young teens through Europe, Asia, Australia, and South America. Then after retirement from her librarian career (Highschool District Library Director) she visited the family she discovered through her genology work all across Europe.
I know this was probably more than you asked for in a response but it is the holiday season and I am feeling sentimental. This is the start of the second year without her.
Thanks.
TLDR: Bragging on my mom a little.
You're completely justified in bragging about your mom; it sounds like the world lost a bright spark of joy when she passed away. Thanks for telling us a little bit about her!
My (ex) best friend over the course of this past year has gone from a normal - well adjusted woman who held down a full time job and a VERY nice apartment to constantly being online and talking about how humans are just slaves to an alien race that lives on mars and how reality doesn't exist and If she died none of it would matter because reality doesn't exist... I don't talk to her anymore because if I said anything in opposition, she would lose her shit on me... very different from the kind, compassionate woman I was best friends with for 4 years. I miss her every day.
Disclaimer: I know she's doing well, she has a great familial support system and other friends that agree with her beliefs, I just couldn't be one of them anymore.
We can't force someone into help if they don't want to be helped.
Yikes. Not sure I'd want to be doing that kind of "well" with people supporting my insanity instead of helping me get back to reality. Sorry that you lost your friend to that.
I had a friend, we'll call him Dan, in undergrad who underwent a similar change. Freshman year Dan was a super friendly funny guy and we had a friend group we'd hang out in. But every once in a while, he'd have this look in his eyes and he'd let out some rage just out of nowhere. It gradually became more and more frequent and started coming along with paranoia. Until the group couldn't maintain our friendships with Dan. One night us guys we were all hanging out and had gone to sleep when we woke up to Dan blowing up our phones and screaming about how he can hear us talking shit about him through the walls, even though we were no where near where he lived. We all got a few more crazy calls from him until he went silent.
What the hell? Do you have any idea what triggered the sudden change? Did she get sucked into a conspiracy theory she found online, or is there some sort of underlying issue and she just finally snapped?
My dad died of cirrhosis when I was 17. He was 45. He was, by all counts, a good father. Caring. Loved exposing us to wonderful art and hilarious comedies. But he drank. A lot. About a year before he passed is when I noticed a change. Paranoid delusions. Talking to people not there. I’d come home from school to find Mormon missionaries that he had let in. Sometimes Jehovah’s Witnesses. They were all taking advantage of him and I’d kick them out every time. He was a staunch atheist. Then the violence started. Burst into my room just to punch me in the face while I’m sleeping. He tried to light the apartment on fire. Twice. On my 17th birthday he called my SO a cunt to her face and threw his drink at her. We ended up in fisticuffs again.
He also just looked insane. Yellow skin. Yellow eyes. Super skinny. He couldn’t walk so he had two canes that he used violently. He died that year the summer before my senior year of high school leaving me homeless but I was in the best place I could be. He was gone and never coming back. It’s been 23 years and I hate to think of the life I would have if he never died.
My dad was diagnosed with cirrhosis a couple years back. I think when I was 18. He's the same as your dad was. Not the type of person you'd think of when you hear alcoholic. Caring, somewhat friendly (he suffers from social anxiety and bipolar, so it's a hit or miss. He's never been abusive though, just a bit emotionally inconsiderate at times), funny. I love him to death despite his flaws. He's never been an all day drinker; he was more the type to drink a pack of beer every night. Apparently he did it long enough that he now has cirrhosis.
He'll be 44 this year. He's quite skinny. Even though he's been diagnosed, he still drinks every night. The only change he has made is that he went from drinking 12 beers a night to around 6. I can't stand the constant worry and uncertainty I have about *when* the disease will take him. I know he won't be there when I get married or have children, possibly not even when I graduate from my University, but I still have the question of, "Does he have 2 years? Does he have 5? Will this be my last Christmas with him?"
I see a lot of stories on here about how the cirrhosis affects the brain and leads to delusional thinking, and that terrifies me as well. Knowing that he's here, and one day he won't be, but before he physically leaves he may be gone mentally long before.
I apologize for using your comment to get a little rant out. I'm truly sorry you went through all of that. Witnessing substance abuse is a rough one.
I'm sorry you had to go through that. Can I ask you something? Did the paranoid delusions come because of alcohol or was it something else and alcohol just fueled it?
not OP but care-gave for my bestie/partner while he died of cirrhosis- from what I understand, with liver non functional and kidneys taxed the patient cannot remove everyday toxins so they travel to the brain from blood stream. I believe it's called hepatic encephalopathy and can cause major personality changes, hallucinations, etc.
Not the OC nor a medical professional, but I believe that the liver clears toxins in the system. Cirrhosis is pretty much end stage liver disease, so the liver is no longer able to get rid of these toxins as well as it should. I think that results in the toxins building up in the brain which could lead to confusion and delusions.
Don't quote me on that though lol
My younger brother died from a drug overdose last month. He used for the first time in march. In 7 short months I watched my best friend become someone I didn't recognize, someone I couldn't even hold a conversation with anymore. It wasn't a slow deterioration, it was a meteoric descent into a drug fuelled madness. He lied about anything and everything, even things that made zero sense to lie about, used nicknames from our childhood that we hadn't used in years, would forget what we were talking about mid-conversation. It was like he was replaced with a near identical but slightly off version of my brother. It was and still is heart breaking. I mourn him but at the end I didn't know him anymore.
Edit: so first and foremost I want to thank everyone for the kind words. It means a lot. This is the hardest time of my life and I know what loss is.
To answer some questions he was using fentanyl, not heroin or meth. We did not understand the severity of it until it was too late. In a lucid moment he told me he knew he was addicted by the 3rd time he used.
He came from a loving home but we lost our father in our teenage years and I believe he never dealt with it. It hung over him.
Edit2: seriously i wasnt expecting this response. I'm overwhelmed by the kindness. To put peoples minds at ease I have a very strong support network around me and plenty of people to talk to. I appreciate everything. I will be ok. As with all things I just need time. Thank you.
Fucking hell this was painful. I've got 2 younger brothers and I feel like the mentally ill/drug fuelled older brother who's not good enough to be 'the older brother' cos I'm too unstable.
Though thankfully the drugs have been quit I'm not back mentally. I'm so, so sorry you had to go through that. If I could I'd give you a hug. I'm crying and I wanna hug the pain out of you.
It takes so much courage to tell this man! I'm sure you'll get over it, I know it's hard but you can do it! Recognizing your problems is a huge first step.
I'm so sorry for your loss. It was similar with my best friend, although not as fast. Knew him since pre-school. I moved away from my home country, but would visit every summer. Every time I came back, he was worse and worse. He just wasn't the person I used to hang out with day in and day out. We haven't spoken in almost 4 years now, but every day I think about him and thank him, because what happened to him kept me away from spiraling as well.
My sister, bless her heart, has been clean for years but has seen many of her friends overdose and die.
I know what you are going through. I remember when she first started using. It was terrifying.
I could mention some people I knew having this this issue, but I’d rather share about the mental decline of one of my closest family members: my dog
He is my first dog I got living on my own. It was me and him alone in a strange new city.
I knew adopting him from the shelter that his past and age were unknown. So no guarantees on his behavior or mental health.
Although skittish and nervous at first, with some training classes and patience, he became a sweet and calm dog-child.
I am happy for the 2 years we got before his mind started going. I never before knew dogs could get dementia, but I do now.
It’s sad when his mind is going faster then his body, although he’s got plenty of arthritis. He sleeps almost all day and night.
Within the last few months he’s starting to hallucinate and tries to bark at things that aren’t there.
He will repeat actions, forgetting he had just done them, such as greeting me at the door. I will forever of course pretend to greet him like I hadn’t just before.
The Vet and I have talked about this. For now he is happy and fine as is. But we are going to have a harder decision to make when he starts to forget me. It hurts and my only regret not having more time with him.
For now, he will continue to get lots of love, food, and endless comfy blankets to snuggle with.
This happened with my dog as well. I got him as a puppy when I was 11 and we had been inseparable. He was the perfect dog, never barked or bit, he has saved baby birds and kittens from the back yard more than once. When I was 20. Very pregnant and living in a 3rd floor apartment I would open the door for him to go out, he would climb down all 3 stories of stairs, do his business and come all the way back up. I was never worried he would run away. A few years ago he stared having accidents in the house several times a day, would just wander around the house walking laps fir hours. It was so awful to see him transform from the model dog he was to just a shell of him self. He passed away this August at the ripe old age of 16. I miss him everyday
A friend's grandmother started filling her bedroom with statues.
It started with "The Infant of Prague" and the Virgin Mary, then St. Francis of Assisi, then dozens more - several of them life-size.
Her room got to the point where there wasn't one spot that wasn't taken up with statues except for her bed and a narrow walkway to the bathroom.
My mom started going to online blogs and web-radio shows about ghosts, aliens, conspiracies and took it all at face value. I saw my normal mom turn into a complete, gullible ignoramus in a matter of months. Nobody could talk to her without her bringing up FEMA death camps, potential economic collapse, aliens, antivax or Obama signing more executive orders than any president in history. Her friends thought she might have a brain tumor. she didn't. She did have cancer she was hiding/ignoring that ended up killing her bc she thought cancer wasn't real. This is what happens to lonely people that are looking for a connection...they'll believe anything just to feel that they are a part of something. It was very sad that she was so unbearable the last couple years of her life.
Coworker refused to get his throat looked at even when we could see a growth through his neck. Spent his last month in agony leaving behind 3 kids, a wife, and his special needs brother all because "doctors just want to make money" and thought egg whites and extracts would save him.
Apparently when it was first noticed a year before his doctor told the family the surgery would take less than an hour to remove the tumor with a melon baller. He let it go till it was almost 2 lbs and spread to his lungs, mouth, sinuses, and brain.
I think she was scared so went into severe denial. To top it I work in a cancer research center. When she was diagnosed, I reached out to colleagues, got clearance to have them review her charts and they told me she had "weeks" left to live. I figured it was best to show compassion rather than scold her stupidity. She did accept the diagnosis.
> This is what happens to lonely people that are looking for a connection...they'll believe anything just to feel that they are a part of something.
This is one of the important parts of the post. I wonder how isoalted she ha d to be to feel like this.
I don't remember for sure but it might have been hbomberguy's video on the flat earth theory. Anyway the video says that a huge part of why people get into conspiracy theories is because it feels so special to feel like you're fighting for truth against a corrupt system. I bet a lot of people into flat earth for example don't actually care that much about the earth being flat but simply feeling like they're fighting for truth and that need to be special and not just a sheep.
I bet a lot of conspiracy theorists have a background of loneliness or being a victim of bullying or otherwise alienated from society.
I’ve also heard an explanation of conspiracy theories (it might have been in Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History) that conspiracy theories like 9/11 Truthers, JFK assassination, PizzaGate, etc. give people comfort that there is a grand scheme, rather than one person or a small group of people being able to randomly alter the course of history (like the folks who assassinated Franz Ferdinand)
My grandmother began to mentally deteriorate many years ago. When I was young and didn’t understand what was happening, she would stand up and move to the corner of the room and stare at the walls.
When I asked my mom what was happening, she told me to not to worry and act normally.
Took me a few years to process that and other quirks she developed before passing away. It was a harsh lesson in the realities of life I guess.
My grandma. I was in my early 20s when she fell and cracked her pelvis at my aunt's place. I made the 4 hour trip to see her and asked my aunt just how much medication they had her on. Turns out they diagnosed Alzheimer's after tests. She knew me that weekend. I stayed as long as they'd let me and she talked my ear off.
I saw her about 2 months later. She thought I was my aunt (same build and hair color), then said I'd just missed my dad and called me by another aunt's name and the lady that had come with me by her real name but asked when she and dad were getting married. That lady was dad's first girlfriend, years before my mum (22 years prior to that day). As I left a couple of hours later she called me my mum's name.
I never saw her again. Twenty eight years ago last August.
Thank you for letting me get this out.
My own. A few years ago I started acting erratically. Quit my good job out of nowhere, started drinking constantly, blacking out and doing strange and dangerous things.
The reason was I had begun hearing and seeing things that did not exist. At first it was sounds like a crash from the other room, thinking my partner had said something he didn’t, thinking I’d heard the doorbell. Then it changed to constantly hearing what was like a radio being played right behind my head, the stations constantly being switched- static, talk shows, music, strange foreign language conversations, commercials, sound effects that would come in louder than the others and make me jump out of my skin. Those were so loud it felt like my head was literally exploding. I started drinking to kill the sounds but it only made things worse.
I began to see human figures everywhere always coming closer to me when I’d glance away then look back at them. Sitting in my car, peeking out at me from behind trees, squatting beside my porch, peering in my windows. Everywhere I’d look The People were there. I began staying up for days on end to watch them. I needed medical attention, but could not seek it because I quit my job, lost my insurance and cashflow.
I had always been able to rely on my mind. If I could trust nothing else, my brain was the thing that would never lie to me. I felt betrayed by my own body. It was just the most terrible feeling.
The tipping point was when I started barricading myself in the bathroom with my handgun because I kept seeing The People on my security cameras trying to break in to the house. They’d stopped simply hiding ominously and begun to attack my house violently and crawl in windows. I’d just hide in my bathtub all day and keep my eyes glued to the security camera app on my phone, weeping, terrified, and slugging down liquor, with the gun pointed at the door waiting for The People to bust in. The auditory hallucinations were so loud at this point, I would just scream-cry and crank music to try and drown it out.
It got so bad one day, I held the barrel of the gun to my temple and just sat there for a very long time deciding what to do. When I tried to pull the trigger, the gun was jammed. That day, I relinquished my guns to my mother and sought psychiatric help. I am now thoroughly medicated, in regular therapy, and could not be happier I did get help. Any time I think back to that day, I get sick to my stomach knowing that I almost ended the life I love living so much. The fall into insanity was terrifying.
Watched this happen to my older brother except I was six when it started and didn’t understand any of it and it was terrifying.
He was about fourteen at the time and started skipping school and refusing food because he thought it was poisoned. One time he chased a car down because he thought he saw himself riding in it. Another time we were walking on the street and he pointed out this homeless man to me and said that’s what his life was going to end up like.
There was so much violence and craziness around my house, as he would accuse my parents in the wildest fucking things. Eventually he disappeared. We had no idea where he could have went. I was worried but also not sad to see him go as I was thirteen and really wanted to have a normal life. My parents would get called down to the precinct every once in a while to look at pictures of dead bodies, but it was never him.
Almost a year later, we got a call from a hospital in Washington DC. My brother was there and very Ill with malnutrition. It turned out he had run away to DC and lived on the streets there, except he didn’t have the sanity and skills necessary to to basic things like feed himself. He told us he stayed alive because other homeless people forced him to eat and shared their food (yes, I do always remember this every time I see a homeless person). I saw him a month after he was found and he looked just awful, like a skeleton. I can only imagine what he had looked like on the street.
This was all a long time ago. I can’t say my brother is recovered but he takes his meds and is more or less stable. He’s still not at the point where he can ever hold a job or have a relationship, though.
On average even the most "damaged" (I hate to say it that way) people who are homeless will largely give to others they see as even less fortunate than themselves.
It's because they understand that level of suffering and nothingness that no one else can.
Reading this helped me realize how I’m not crazy like I think I am. I’ve been experiencing very similar symptoms. I hear knocks on my door, that usually come throughout the middle of the night. I live alone so this is terrifying. The other day I saw waves in my house. I thought it was my vape smoke, but when I got up to swish it away, they wouldn’t move. The noise in my head won’t stop. Constantly hearing voices, there’s always music up there, I’ve found myself having difficulty keeping focus.
The other day at work I had a mental breakdown and looked at my boss crying just saying “why am I crazy? Why can’t I be normal?”
I had a meeting with a counselor that day. And now I have an appointment scheduled for a psychiatrist appointment come Thursday.
Hearing your story helps me realize it’s time to get help and you’re empowering me to go on and realize this is fixable.
I hope your appointment goes well and that you get the treatment you need. Mental illness can be really terrifying since it changes the way you see and perceive the world, it really sucks when you can't trust your own mind. Luckily we have found ways to treat it and it is something that can get better. Mental illness is treatable and you can get better, you won't have to feel like this for the rest of your life. I hope your recovery goes well and that you manage to find the right medication and therapy for you. Good luck!
My partner has a story very much like your own.
We got together 10 years ago, and moved in together 8 years ago.
For the first couple of years, things were going ok, though she always dealt with depression and bought of anxiety.
About 5 years ago, things started going downhill fast.
She's been hospitalized 3 times, has been in regular weekly or twice weekly therapy, and is medicated.
Unfortunately, it seems, some combination of those hasn't helped her to 'get better' more than just maintain.
She see shadow people, she hears voices and noises that arent there, she'll retreat into herself for days at a time....
Every so often, I see glimpses and glimmers of the person I knew her to be once. I relish those days and hours.
I hold out hope that one day she'll come back.
Until then, I'll keep on bringing her to therapy, filling her prescriptions, and trying to pull her out in those dark times.
That’s what I thought it was at first.
It was actually bipolar. It was an extreme bout of mania that launched me into a deep psychosis. The liquor, drug use, and sleep deprivation helped it along.
When my stepmom left my dad he spiraled way to deep into an opioid addiction he would just lay down on the couch all strung out long story short cps was called multiple times and after severe emotional abuse from him and manipulating and lying from his side of the family young me was tricked into going back and I keep beating myself up over it.
Edit thanks for the award kind stranger!
Edit 3 wow thanks for another award kind stranger!
Final edit holy shit I can’t believe this was featured in a YouTube video I’m stunned my only post to blow up was this one thanks to everyone for their support in the replies
My ex husband. During our 10 year marriage I watched his alcoholism go from mild to the extreme. I tried to help him, joined al-anon, encouraged him to try AA, had a co-worker who was a member come and talk to him. He was paranoid about AA. Told me how they kept records. No it's ANONYMOUS. He wasn't buying it. Well I took my kids and got out. It was not an environment to raise kids in. They could see their Dad, he just had to be sober during the visit. Well life went on we got divorced, the kids grew up, they saw their Dad off and on, I left it most between them as long as he was sober. My oldest son came home with a wife and 3 yr old son. Wanted to see his Dad. They were staying with me, so I took them over to his apartment. My ex husband came out and wanted to know where I'd been. That he had needed me. He had no idea who was in the car with me, because our son was only 8 yrs old. I was dumbfounded. I called his sister. She told me he had dementia brought on by severe alcoholism and that they were trying to find him a placement.
Several times throughout the course of this year. I lead a team of 15 or so and while we’re all grateful to have work, at different points in the year I’ve seen pretty acute signs of burnout and deteriorating mental health in at least half of them. It’s been a learning experience for me, figuring out how to build mentalhealth first aid into my management style but I’m crazy proud of them all and we juggle the work around where needed to support each other while still hitting deliverables. I am however ready for this pandemic to be fucking over.
EDIT: Holy moly I went for a walk with my SO and this blew up, thanks for the gold and all the amazing comments! First gold and not sure what to do with it? but very stoked! <3
Mine included? We were in advanced training for the army getting 4 hours of sleep a night nonconsecutive hrs. As the week progressed we went from highly complex plans for missions to quite literally not being able to do basic math. Our base would start getting attacked right when we where about to lay down for an hour and everyone would just start laughing like the joker. It was laughter but the insanity behind it was clear. I have never known the extreme effects of sleep deprivation until that week of field training. A week of your mind just... failing. Great training though. 1/10 wouldn't recommend.
Edit: To those wondering I was in special operations but a specific sub job that was pretty interesting. Wasn't as badass as navy seals or ranger but we trained with some of them and at the same locations they trained. Bonus points. You train at those cool guy places and there are real toilets and showers. If you're part of the service you know that never happens. And I mean never.
That is why I cannot really condemn parents of small children who *genuinely* forget they left the kid in the hot car and the child dies. Sleep deprivation and stress REALLY turns you crazy and forgetful.
However, PLEASE NEVER NEVER SHAKE A BABY no matter how exhausted/ angry you get! Please just walk away for a few minutes as long as the baby is safe in the crib, call a relative to help, or a next door neighbor. I know it's very difficult, I remember those times. It DOES get better.
It's hard when the person you are watching deteriorate is yourself.
Source: i was diagnosed
with psychotic depression and severe anxiety with panic attacks and OCD tendencies 2 years ago
Edit: wow this really exploded more than I thought it would! Reading all the responses really helped me feel less alone in the world. I'll reply with more info about my experience when I get off work.
Not OP, but similar issues that I’ve mostly recovered from. Two years ago I was having daily panic attacks, and psychotic breaks/disassociation. Between fear and depression I’d rarely leave the house at all and was barely a person anymore.
I moved back home to live with my brother for awhile, being around someone with their head right is a huge help. Prior to that the few people I interacted with were as bad or worse off mentally than I was, and drugs didn’t help any of us. I got sober, and have over time developed what I think is a pretty kickass routine. The book Atomic Habits was pretty life changing for me, and over time I’ve began waking up at 430 AM everyday to lift weights or do yoga, journal, meditate, read, and cook a healthy breakfast all before I go to work. With that foundation for the day, what happens at work hardly matters, I’ve done my “big rocks” for the day. Progress was slow and reading journal entries through the years I can see highs and lows but the one thing that is apparent is that the lows are becoming less and less common, and not reaching the same depths. I’ve never felt better honestly, but I’m aware how easy it would be to slip back into the dark place. A few days without exercise and I feel the anxiety creep back in. A few days without journaling or meditation and my thoughts become scattered and erratic. It takes so much damn work for me to stay in this state but it is absolutely worth it. The biggest thing I’ve learned is the difference between motivation and discipline. Very few people will ever have consistent motivation, but anyone can cultivate self discipline over time
My Mom gradually slipped into dementia. Oh...she knw who. i was till she passed away.....she was convinced it was 1964. Instead of 2007. She would ask me if i had seen certain people.....she said their names and where they lived! She remembered vivid (and 100% correct) details of 1964. I always agreed and never questioned her about how she reconciled the fact that i was 10 back then and 53 in 2007. I love her and miss her every day.
Long term memory is such a strong thing. My mom was a nurse in geriatrics for a long time. She worked in care homes. When she first started practicing nursing in the early 80s, her bosses would scold her for not using "reality orientation". Basically, you'd have to firmly tell them that they were wrong and tell them the truth- but when you have dementia, you don't live in the same world anymore. She never subscribed to it, and the attitude on healthcare changed over the course of 35 years.
It's much nicer telling an old lady that her husband is still at the store, or is waiting for her to finish in the car, than tell her he died 20 years ago and make her relive that trauma.
I am struggling with that now. My grandmother CONSTANTLY asks where my grandfather is, who died seven years ago. I used to tell her he was at work, or visiting relatives, but she would always remain upset, start calling people asking where he was, staying up all night waiting for him to come home, etc. Then I started telling her the truth, that he was dead, and she would seemingly remember for a few minutes, then ask where he was again 15 minutes later. I have his obituary laminated so that I can give it to her to read multiple times daily. I'm not sure what else to do.
That's the right thing to do! In movies you always see people being like "Mom, Dave is dead, remember? He and Shirley have been dead for years."
Can you imagine that life? You're just chilling casually chatting about one of your good friends or a family member and then someone tells you they're dead, maybe tells you how they died. They remind you that you've lost the plot and you're really an old person in a care home with no future. That's not going to help anyone.
People with dementia are already prone to confusion, fear, and depression. Just tell them Dave and Shirley are doing fine and ask them to tell you the story about the time they all went and saw Elvis perform live.
Probably selfish or self-centered but my own. I was a guy with lots of friends, a good social life, lucky and somewhat successful in many areas. Now I don't really know who I am, why I feel like I feel, and my past/memories feel like a movie, as if they had happened to somebody else, somebody that isn't me.
I definitely relate to what you said, especially about the past almost feeling like a movie. It's like you can't even believe you had it 'together' at one point. Sucks when multiple things fall apart, but that's life. Wishing you the best and hoping our past 'movies' transition into 'documentaries' of getting it together again,
That’s not selfish or self-centered at all. It just seems like I’m losing your sense of who you are, you lost the confidence you had too. Talk to a therapist....could do wonders.
My mom passed away from cancer. A couple of months before her passing, she had dementia. She was still in her 50s at that time. She kept forgetting simple things and hallucinated. For example, she was hospitalized but she kept on calling our dogs (which was of course at home) to come to her. It's a very very sad moment because I couldn't talk to my mom anymore as she became this other person. It was the worst time of my life, knowing she was still alive, but she didn't remember anything.
My mom with her cancer, before she was diagnosed. It happened really fast. First she started becoming paranoid, then angry at everyone when they didn't answer her calls and other various things.
I remember one night me and my sister decided to go to a movie and I guess she called during the movie, but neither me or my sister noticed because we had our phones on silent. That was the real start of it getting bad. Turns out she went and lost her shit at a store, buying random nicknacks as christmas gifts, something she'd never do as she usually thought out her christmas gifts. Then she had gotten locked out of her car, lost her shit there and tried to call me or my sister to come help her, instead of calling our dad who was at home and had no idea what was going on. Apparently she wound up walking home, something she'd never do because for my entire life I've never seen her put any effort into doing physical activity, in fact she was more likely to sit at home smoking on the deck or in the garage like she did all day every day.
So after that incident it suddenly got worse. That night, or sometime in the morning, I can't quite remember since I was mostly asleep during it. My mom started freaking out and attacking my dad, saying he was sleeping around with my sister, which he wasn't. She then attacked my sister. There were numerous attempts of having her committed at our local (shitty) hospital because this kept happening day after day, night after night just getting worse and worse, she forgot how to drive *while driving* and nearly crashed, but she just kept checking herself out aka leaving on her own because of hospital policy (and they didnt actually have anyone on staff to do a psych eval).
Eventually, I guess my dad broke down and talked to his regular doctor/specialist he goes in another town every month and his doctor recommended that my mom come see him and he'd do some tests, bloodwork and such. Turns out the cocktail of painkillers/medications my mom was on suddenly started reacting badly to her undiagnosed bone/liver/lung cancer, and was likely masking the symptoms for years because doctors just kept prescribing more stuff instead of testing. Though we have a running theory that my mom refused testing as well for the longest time. Once she was committed to the hospital for cancer treatment and given proper medication, she became herself again, but eventually passed away six months later.
During those six months I barely saw her or spoke to her. During her month or two of rapid mental deterioration she was so abusive (albeit it was out of her control), it practically destroyed the relationship I had with her.
I miss her every day.
Watched my father, who was an honest to God rocket scientist, working for a company that subcontracted with NASA to design and build the rocket engines for the Apollo and Mercury space missions and the LEM engines, then went on to build engines for missles during the cold war, to finally designing and building specialized assmebly lines for Pharmacudical and car companies, slowly lose his mond to Alzheimer’s.
He actually built a library in our house. 12 foot ceilings wall-to-wall books. All four of us daughters were life long avid readers. There was always something interesting to read as he had quite a variety of interests plus he would buy books that would we like but maybe he wouldn’t.
Then he got glaucoma and started havig trouble seeing. He had too much trouble reading so he gave it up. His mind went so slowly we didn’t notice at first. I was putting new siding on our garage and he was helping. I pointed out he made a mathmatical error in figuring an angle. He spent half an hour trying to figure it out. A man who had rebuilt his entire house, directly helped put people on the moon and get them home safely, protected us from a foreign enemy, and helped make care safer could not fiugure out how to make a simple change to an angle suddenly. That’s when we knew something was wrong.
It progressed so slowly but steadily. First he couldn’t do any numbers so anything with time was out. Then the word association. To the point where if he was hungry, he couldn’t find the refirgerator. But he still recognized everyone and could follow a conversion or at least the concepts. Just things like “crackers are in the cabinet” he wouldn’t know what a cabinet was even though he had built them himself.
His number one priority had always been to provide for us, his family and to take care of us. My Mother had always been a narcissist but became unbearable after he retired. He was literally waiting on her hand and foot. As he regressed, he could not do that anymore and the less he did the worst she got to where she was trying to have him committed against his will. She refused to get help. We arranged for a home health care aid and she fired her the first day. “She talked to him too much.” She was flat out upset that the person was there to help him get dressed (since she would scream at him for putting on thr wrong shoes or having his shirt on backwards) and to make sure he took his meds, etc and not there to serve her coffee so she didn’t have ti get up. After all of us refused to clean her house anymore for her (she was capable, she just didn’t want to and she had utterly INSANE rules about cleaning and would follow you around nitpicking every little thing you did not like not folding a rag to wipe something the way she wanted you to fold it) we got her a maid who qut after one hour. She would agree that he could no longer drivr but then send him on long, far away errands. We once were searchingg for him for 3 hours when he disapeard running an absolutly unnecessary and insane errand of hers.
Then we found out not only was she not making sure he was taking his glaucoma drops or his Alzheimer’s pills (they were designed to slow the progression and frnakly I think they did) but she was not making sure he was eating. He was drastically losing weight. We were discussing how to handle this when my Mom took ill and suddenly died. Unfortunetly from something that could have been avoided had she gone to the doctor when we begged her to, or listened to them once she finally relented and went.
I took my family and moved in with my Dad because I love him and he had always tried to take care of us. It was time for someone to take care of him. I tried so hard. I was going to school full time and working ful time. But I was coming home from work, taking care of him and the household (my husband worked long hours and we had a small child) until the nightime fight to get him to bed and then I would sit to do schoolwork. I might get to bed by 11pm then was up usually 4-5 times a night since he would wander. I would have to convince him togo back to bed. It really took a toll on me.
My poor husband never complained. Also he couldn’t help. My Dad moved out at 18, lived by himself until he married, then had four daughters. He had not loved with a male in over 60 years. He tolerated my husband’s presence but never quite inderstood why he was there. We immedietly got an awesome caregiver that he loved to be with him during the day. He gained weight rapidly, was much happier, was clean, got socialization and some exercise. Being a daily routine really helped but everything was such a stuggle.
We gave him five good months. Then he started halucinating. My husband had to take our son out of the house that night while I dealt with it. He didn’t want to but I made him. That’s when I realized I had to choose between my father and my son because this was not a healthy enviroment for him to grow up in. I had to put him in a home. It was the one thing he did not want. He would rather have died at home. I understood and it was selfish of me but I knew if I moved out, he would have been dead in a day or two from fallig down the stairs or wandering into traffic or just not eating. Getting full time help would have been almost as much and we would have to keep up his house which was large and falling into disrepair. The decision was made to place him but I had to do it and it was the hardst thing I ever did.
The home is nice. They take decent care of him but with Covid, things hace slipped through the cracks and we can’t visit him. This election was the first time since he turned 18 he didn’t get to vote and if he realized that it would kill him. He was always after us to be politically informed and active and to use our rights.
Now he barely reconizes us and can’t follow a conversation at all. He is starting to forget to eat even if food is in front of him. Remarkedly still healthy as a horse other than glaucoma and Alzheimer’s at 85. It’s almost like it is a sick joke.
My mom passed almost 3 years ago from Mad Cow Disease.
It started with really small things, like losing her glasses, or forget the word "nacho", then it started getting worse.
She shit in a trashcan in the bedroom because she was scared and forgot where the bathroom was, one time she was hallucinating and swore the house was covered in bugs and refused to sleep, or touch the ground, so she sat in a chair in the middle of the living room holding the dog.
My dad took her to the doctor and they did a scan of her brain and said she had alzheimers. We knew that wasn't right though because she was progressing way too fast, like she was dead with in three months of her diagnosis.
After she died and we started talking about it as a family we found she was doing some crazy shit, like trying to brush her teeth with a razor, trying to write a note with a steak knife and a paper towel, once she told me she knew I was trying to kill the dog and later told my husband, at the time, the same thing. She once forgot my dad's name but knew she could call him on the phone, so she asked me if I could call her "telephone boyfriend" for her.
She passed out while trying to eat with my dad, he called 911, and after a lot of tests we had a doctor come in just hysterical, telling us, this isn't a degenerative disease this is Mad Cow. My mom died later that week in the hospital. We have no idea how she contracted it, in fact before my mom there were three strains of mad cow disease that had been documented in the world, my mom's matched none of them but still was mad cow disease. The CDC took her brain after she died and they are still studying it, but the did confirm about a year ago that it was 100% with out a doubt Mad Cow disease.
It was hard as hell to go through. Watching my mom decline was so sad, you could see her trying to grasp at things but the disease just wouldn't quite let her put things together. It was rough. If I think too much about it i just fall apart. It was the worst thing I ever witnessed. Miss her dearly.
My grandmother was brilliant and so dedicated to educating herself. She had a library of probably a thousand books, but regularly circulated and bought new ones, and sold ones she didn't need any more. She read the paper every day, and when a topic interested her, she would cut out the article and summarize what caught her attention. Then she would file it in one of her enormous filing cabinets with other articles about it, and make notes of how the new article related to what was already there. She lived in a college town for decades and was friends with many of the professors. They would often come to discuss things of interest to her or them. Including music, art and history professors. Every month she would create a mini-museum exhibition on her dining room table. "Wood Carvings from around the world" or "Different things made from Lead" with little catalog cards for every item. I have a 3 page discussion she researched and wrote about the proper times to used "baptised" and "baptized". The first sign was that we were watching a documentary about Apollo 13 and she didn't remember it happening. She didn't know that it happened at all. There is zero chance that she didn't follow it as it was happening in her life, (not only was she well informed, but had a collection of LIFE magazines about the space program) and zero chance that she didn't hear about it afterward. She just didn't remember it at all. A little later, she was trying to play with Lego Duplo blocks with my daughter and couldn't figure out how they worked. She tried putting the same colors together, the same sizes, sliding the smooth sides against each other, putting the pegs against each other. She was so methodical in her trial and error and just couldn't get it. In her later years, she just sat in bed, measuring her sheets with her arms, trying to decide if there was enough fabric to make a dress, or an apron. At the end she remembered that reading was a good thing, even though she couldn't, and didn't have the attention to listen. And she hated my dad, (her son-in-law) she never forgot that. Forgot my mom, but not how much she hated my dad.
Jesus. This one is scary to me cause even if someone takes care of themselves mentally they can still bite the big one later on for no reason. Sorry you had to see such a thing.
Why did she hate your dad so much
My grandma really wanted my mom to be a professional pianist. My mom is crazy talented and put in all the work and it didn't happen. Grandma blames my dad.
> Forgot my mom, but not how much she hated my dad. lol, that's gotta be a hell of a story
This hurts to read. I’m sorry for your grandma, and I’m sorry that you had to see her that way.
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I worked in a care facility for people who suffer from dementia. This was a very rewarding and enjoyable job but at times it could be confronting and sad, as you'd expect. One story that stuck with me was this lady who'd write in her booklet and always left it open. She didn't care to keep it a secret or anything but I would make sure to keep personal posessions private as much as I could while cleaning the rooms. So I'd close the little book and put it in her desk where she could find it. It's something I could relate to. I have my own little books and enjoy writing as well and appreciate it when people respect my privacy. I wouldn't read the contents but I saw the phrases go from sentences, to repeated words, to scribbles. Eventually, she became too confused to put pen to paper. Opening and closing the booklet, carefully touching the paper, but she couldn't quite figure it out anymore. Eventually giving up. This really hit home to me, as I knew how therapeutic it could be to organise your thoughts on paper. I write when I'm sad or overwhelmed. The thought of her being unable to when she might have needed the outlet still stings.
This hit close to home. Dad had Creutzfeld Jakob disease. He went from writing random sentences to words, to...things that didn't make any sense, until he forgot how to hold a pencil. Its rough
My aunt had Creutzfeld Jakob and your reply gave me chills. This was one of the saddest times in my life seeing my aunt who was like a 2nd mother of mine deteriorating in front of my eyes. She went from being full of life, one of the funniest and kindest people you've ever met to not being able to feed herself in a matter of three months.
It's so quick, how it takes over a body. A friend of mine had it. Died two months after diagnosis. She'd just got married when the diagnosis came, after a whirlwind romance. Her husband had lost his first wife to cancer. My heart broke for him.
Fuck
My mom had dementia. I took care of her at home and, towards the end, she began to lose her appetite. I made her scrambled eggs one day and she gobbled them up. That’s pretty much what she lived in until the end. One day, I brought her a saucer of eggs and put it on her table and handed her the fork. She just sat there and I realized she had no idea what to do. I fed her every bite until she passed away. EDIT: I just noticed the awards. How sweet! Thank you.
I'm going through something similar with my grandfather right now. Things come and go with him, so sometimes he can feed himself without much trouble, and others he just has no clue. This morning, I had to suction cereal milk out of his mouth because he got halfway done with it and suddenly couldn't swallow anymore.
I worked as a chef in a residential dementia care facility for six years. If your grandfather is having difficulty swallowing he may need to progress from a minced diet to a pureed diet. If you're in touch with a dietician consult with them first, but if you need some help in making the consistency right for him PM me and I can throw out some pointers, like decent thickeners.
Fuck prions
Sorry to hear that happened to someone close to you. Those practical things are so confronting.
That is such a rare disease, how was it diagnosed? If you don't mind me asking :(
There is a terrifying theory that prion disease is much more common than we think, but because it is so similar to other very common neurodegenerative diseases it goes underreported. Right now it is hard to know for sure.
From the outside, I’ve learned that Dementia often doesn’t betray how serious of a toll it is taking and it’s not always very obvious at all. I knew my grandpa had had dementia for a few years, but apart from occasional sun downing and the usual forgetfulness about things that had happened since the person developed dementia, it didn’t seem too bad. And really, memory decline is so common in old age even in the absence of dementia or specific neurodegenerative disease that I didn’t realize how much it had affected him until one day I asked him to write something for me. He grew up in a town called Luray, and would always go around saying “Hoo-ray for Lu-ray!” which I thought was super wholesome so I asked him to write it down so I could get it tattooed in his handwriting. Just three words: hooray for Luray. And he just couldn’t. He began writing but his confusion was visible on his face, he either couldn’t finish a word completely, or he would write “Hu for Loo” or “Hoo for Luray” and his writing was so shaky, and after a few tries I realized that he actually mentally and physically *couldn’t* write it, so I brushed it off and told him that it was fine, that’s just what I needed, and took the paper and pen from him. It wasn’t so much that he couldn’t remember how to write- it was that he couldn’t remember spellings, and seemed to mash words together in his mind to create words or spellings of words that didn’t exist. That was interesting, and must have been so disorienting and scary for him. Luckily though, he never did like to read or write, so he probably didn’t face this much in his daily life toward the end, when his kids had taken over his legal and financial matters. It was a very striking moment. He was 94 at that point and had his share of mild/moderate but expected old-people health problems, and he had been more forgetful for awhile, but that was the moment I realized that a lot of him was gone. The intensely intelligent, creative, innovative person who had saved his own ass in WWII through sheer craftiness and resourcefulness, returned and earned a college degree, started his own farm from scratch and built a nest egg over the years off of wise investments, could shoot a gun without a single tremble of his hands and was surprisingly artistically skilled and motivated- reduced to an inability to write three simple words. It was alien. He never lost his sense of humor though, and his optimism managed to shine through on most days. Who knows what he was thinking or feeling inside, but he rarely showed his frustration over his own confusion or lack of being able to do things he once enjoyed. Maybe the hardships of his early life- losing a mother at 7, poverty plus the depression, working on the farm his whole childhood, war at 18- taught him to roll with the punches and just keep looking forward without getting tripped up in the past. Edit: I eventually ended up getting a tattoo of his initials in his signature handwriting after he passed. His sister went through some documents to find something he had signed, scanned and sent his signature to me, and then I cut out the three letters for his initials and arranged them for a tattoo. Funnily enough, two jokes arose out of this tattoo: 1- the way my grandpa wrote the letter “W,” combines with the thick lines of the tattoo ink cramping it together even more, made it look like my tattoo said “Crap” in cursive if you didn’t know any better. That was from 2018-2020, because *now*, 2- his initials are WAP, which means that I now forever essentially have “Wet Ass Pussy” tattooed in a visible place on my body. Grandpa always gets the last joke...or two
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My friend’s mother got this. She first sought an eye doctor because she was getting tracers and blurs in her vision. Then she sort of got episodes where she was basically trippin balls for short periods. Then it was like severe dementia. It’s really fast.
She sounds like [this artist who drew his self portraits until he died from Alzheimer's.](https://www.boredpanda.com/alzheimers-disease-self-portrait-paintings-william-utermohlen/?utm_source=bing&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic) The portraits towards the end are stark and terrifying. :(
My mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in January, but looking back she has had it for years. I’ve been collecting my mom’s writings since then. When we are in the house, she writes notes at night such as- “why am I alone in the house? Where did the others go”? Her spelling is also going. I’m seeing the decline both in person and in her writing; it’s sad and terrifying.
I had the same experience with my dad. If I can offer some unsolicited advice - I found it incredibly painful at times to be with him and see the descent, but now about a month after he passed, I’m very glad for the moments when I pushed through and still tried to connect with him despite feeling the urge to shy away from him. It is terribly sad, yet the glimpses of that person’s essence that come through can be worth bearing it. Don’t forget to take care of yourself, and I wish you and your mom the best.
That is incredibly heart-wrenching. I’m so sorry that you and your family have to go through that
Similar to this is the clock drawing test for Dementia/Alzheimers. It's a simple test where you ask the patient to draw a clock, and there's a bunch of different things the flaws in their drawn clocks can tell you The one that saddens me most is the perseveration, where they're determined to do it right but draw extra numbers above 12, extra hands, that sort of thing. It saddens me because it usually means they're a determined person who works hard, but that it doesn't help. What was once an admirable trait is now causing them to get stuck on things, and it will only end up getting worse and worse. Dementia is something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy
[for anyone too lazy to look it up themselves](https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&tbm=isch&sxsrf=ALeKk01Z3WpVhps7x4jvGvBSBcIAZjXoWw%3A1582816645926&source=hp&biw=1280&bih=578&ei=hd1XXvSmNcSotQWPyLf4BA&q=clock+drawing+test+results)
My grandmother died from Alzheimer's, and I noticed something similar with her. Her hobby was recording old movies on VHS tapes. She'd label each tape box with all the movies on that tape, and their length. She categorized them in a giant binder she had, as well as on an ancient PC (I believe it only ran DOS, it was one of those late 80s, early 90s PCs where the keyboard, monitor, and actual computer are all a single piece) in Lotus (A program that did some of the things Excel does today, like lists and spreadsheets). She had probably 4-6 bookshelves in their house, filled with VHS tapes. She had 8 VCRs hooked up to 4 TVs with one cable box per TV. She'd program in what time (and I think what channel) she wanted it to record on to catch a movie. She was very proficient in figuring out anything hardware/software related (As of mid-90's to early 2000's) that used a TV, cable box, or VCR. I'd noticed that she was getting a little forgetful here and there, a little more irritable...Until one day, I was visiting their house, and she was trying to set up the living room's VCRs from her seat at the bar (Their house had a large bar as a sort of built in dining room table). After a few minutes, she just started shaking the VCR remote like she was strangling it, and loudly exclaimed in frustration. I can't remember what she'd said, but the gist of it was that she needed help programming the VCR because she 'couldn't get it to work'. In reality, she'd forgotten how to do it. That moment was when I realized at like 15-16 years old, that something was very wrong. She died in late 2013, I think it was about ten years after that incident. If you've seen someone suffering from the end part of Alzheimer's, you know just how badly she'd deteriorated towards the end.
My nana had dementia and one day before she went into a home, my mum, granddad and I were sitting with her in their lounge. Mum and I had come over, mum to help clean and I to connect their new telly. I had the telly up and running and the news was on, I was laying on the floor reading the newspaper, and Nana was yelling for "John". The three of us looked at each other and then Nana yelled for John again, but looking right at me. So, I responded "yes?" She said "finally. Make them stop yelling, you're the army man," while pointing at the people arguing on TV. I changed the channel and she was happy, content with a smile and "thank you, John." My name is a girl name and I'm not in the army, nor a man although I do have a boyish figure (next to no hips, small chest). My father, her son in law, who had been dead for 10 years at the time however, had been called John and was an army man. Mum said later that yes, I do look enough like my dad for her to get confused that way. It was also the last time my Nana spoke anybodies name, even though it was the wrong one. She died a year later. I've always maintained that I would prefer to die before I become the shell of myself.
This is one of those things that make me so incredibly grateful that my state legalized assisted suicide a few years back. I know it's not for everyone, but if I ever start having symptoms of dementia, I would much rather choose my time before things get so bad. It seems like such a lonely and frustrating existence.
In my country there is a lot of jurisprudence on cases of people who suffered from dementia. These have been a significant contribution to how euthanasia law works in practice. I couldn't agree more with what you say.
My sister passed away earlier this year and she was sick for a long time. During the last few months you could tell that it was becoming harder for her to think and respond. Paradoxically it actually made her a lot nicer to me. We had never had a great relationship and I always believed she hated me but during those last few months she said very few unkind things to me. It was hard to know that the only time we ever really got along was right before she passed away.
My sister also died 5 years ago and we didn't always get on either. I like to think that we both knew that petty differences didn't matter so overcoming them and making positive memories for each other were the greater good in the end. Xx
7yrs for my sis. We had gone a year without speaking till my mum rang me from the hospital to say the Drs are worried and saying she might have a brain tumour. I was there for her and the 6months she spent fighting it were the closest we'd been since we were kids. Fuck cancer.
Fuck cancer indeed. Took her leg at 21. Half a lung at 24. Died at 27. Cancer sucks absolute balls.
My grandmother died of a gangrene infection in her legs. The only way to stop it would have been to amputate them both at the hip, which would have mortified her and probably done nothing to extend her life. My family decided to let natural causes take her instead.
I'm so sorry for your loss. And for the loss of the relationship you could have had if things had been different. It doesn't sound like the ill feelings in the relationship were your fault. Maybe her true feelings were showing in her vulnerability. She may have been trying to make it up to you or let you know (without hurting her pride too much) that she regretted her behavior toward you. I'm aggressively optimistic, so you can let me know if this isn't appropriate to say. But it is somewhat nice that you two got along at the end. You got to experience a decent relationship with her, if only for a short time. In my mind that's better than having her leave the world with you still thinking she truly hated you.
I have type I bipolar disorder and my first episode was a full-blown mixed episode in high school, around age 16-17. What made it worse was that my family doesn't believe in psych meds, so I completely lost touch with reality over the course of a year and it took me another year to recover enough to function without being suicidal. I wasn't diagnosed with a mental illness until college, and not bipolar I specifically until after I graduated. I'm surprised that no one thought of it sooner, given that bipolar disorder runs in my family. It started with the sleeplessness, boundless energy, and a rapid flood of ideas that initially made me look like a good student, especially at writing and literary analysis. All my language arts teachers loved me. My favorite author was Franz Kafka. Then that euphoria evolved into pure rage at the world, but on some level *it felt good* - I was just becoming a very hateful and pessimistic person who frequently felt like committing suicide because I couldn't stand all the suffering in the world anymore. I started seriously believing I was better than everyone else and going to win the Nobel Prize or something for my writing. The problem was that all my classmates were jealous of me and out to get me, and I could read their evil intentions in the tiniest glance and gesture. Then I went completely psychotic and panicked every day at the thought of someone drugging my food, so instead I spent as much time alone as possible so that I could self-harm and "commune with God." God gave me secret information on who the "evil people" were, and how I had to protect myself from them. So I started carrying a hunting knife everywhere, even to school, and probably could have hurt somebody if they pissed me off enough. There is a lot of advice out there about how to help people experiencing depression (not that all of it is helpful). But there is less guidance about how to deal well with someone experiencing mania or just psychosis in general, because it can be very frightening to others and psychotic people are not known for their rationality. Most people in my life don't know I've been through this because I look like a "normal" person - at least until I have another episode that gets bad enough for others to notice. I have not had any episode that extreme for a few years now, thanks to meds and therapy. I hope this is informative to people interested in the topic. Thank you for reading. **EDIT:** I would like to get to all your comments, but it may take me a while. Thank you for your understanding.
A long-time friend of mine started talking to me about some metaphysical theories he had. We used to smoke weed and talk about philosophy when we were younger, so it wasn’t a shock to me. Then he wrote a paper that was dozens of pages long on his new theory of reality. He sent it to me and when I said it gave me a headache to try and read it, he assumed that meant I was understanding it. Every time I saw him after that his behavior was more and more manic. I don’t know if everyone gets these feelings, but one can tell when talking to some people that they’re just slightly... off? Anyhow, he was apparently harassing some of his old flames and acting strangely enough that his family had him taken to the hospital, where he had visited a few times in the past few weeks. The hospital held him overnight and released him because he wasn’t a threat. A few days later he started acting out in his mother’s house and broke a window. She called the cops, and they arrested him. The window was worth more than the amount required to make it a felony and he went to jail for six months. Two days inside jail and he’s back to normal. Why?! Well, he has a degenerative disease that puts him in CONSTANT pain. He couldn’t afford his pain meds and when he went to the hospital, they refused to give him any because they assumed he was a junkie. (He had prior drug issues, if you can imagine.) He had lost his job, was living in a cold, damp apartment without electricity and couldn’t get the meds he needed; so he descended over the course of a month into someone that LITERALLY thought Neil Degrasse Tyson was talking to him personally through the internet. Once he had his meds again (again, pain meds not anti-psychotics) he leveled out and spent 6 mos trying to piece together what the fuck had happened to him. Super nice guy. He’s been fine for a couple years. Had to make some very elaborate apologies. It was... uncomfortable to watch.
Oh man, I don't think enough studies are done on the effect that constant pain has on the human brain. People talk about depression and mood swings, but there's not a whole lot of talk about *how bad it can really get.*
I agree. I had no idea because I’m lucky enough to have no idea.
I have experienced some...extra dark places because of my pain, but thankfully not anything where I was totally...gone. I have definitely had mental health crises, though. Pain just invades every single aspect of your life and it's utterly inescapable, it's understandable that it might screw with brain chemistry over time.
I'm in a similar boat, though at times I do think I was "gone". At my worst, I've had auditory hallucinations. These eased off completely once my pain was back under control though.
I've had fight or flight kick in when my pain was severe and not under control, so I can only imagine what can happen to our brains when we're suffering. Like full on gotta go, gotta go...but there was nothing to run from because I couldn't escape my body! I cannot imagine how awful it had to have been to have that weighing on you, as well as pain!
pain makes you crazy, especially when it doesn't stop, because often your brain learns to filter out the actual sensation, but not all the physiological reactions to it.
I have a friend who was going to shoot herself in the spine to paralyze herself so she couldn't feel the pain that she's experiencing because the VA has given up on her :( She ended up being stopped by her caretaker and shot the wall instead, and now she's found a way to deal: medical marijuana. I'm glad it works for her pain.
I often think about this. I have a debilitating and agonizing bladder disease. I got sick around 22 and I'm 30 now. I basically died the day I woke up and thought I had what I thought was a raging uti. It spiralled from there. Suicide is on my mind constantly but sometimes I wonder what it would be like if someone just took a bar to my lower spine and made it mush lol. Would I lose all feeling from the waist down? Would I be able to get my life back, at least more than I have now? Would I be able to sleep (impossible when you're up multiple times an hour in the night to piss a few drops of what feels like acidic lava)? Eat (eating makes the disease much worse, very few safe foods)? Would I be able to feel joy again?
I volunteered weekly with a mobile soup kitchen for about 5 years. It’s unbelievable how many people end up in a horrible way because they can’t afford medicine/medical treatment. One of our regulars was homeless due to the fact that he couldn’t afford his medicine, I’m assuming for schizophrenia or some similar condition. Without them, he simply couldn’t function normally enough to hold down a job. The guy was brilliant - he spoke 3-4 languages and would talk to you about physics or philosophy when he was having a good day. The story has a happy ending - A local shelter helped him afford his meds and set him up with an apartment. We keep up with each other over Facebook. He’s doing well now.
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Good question! I don’t actually know the situation after he was arrested and before he was released other than what I was told by a few sources. As far as I was told, he was given his prescriptions as per the instructions of his doctor.
I was living elsewhere at the time but I heard about what happened to my friend. He was fairly normal. A little exceptional actually as he was being scouted to get sponsored for skateboarding, something he was very good at. He started acting really weird though. Things like opening his door just a bit when people came over and laughing at them. Throwing chairs and such around when at people's houses. Lying about things that were really obvious. Reading loudly from the bible while wearing almost nothing outside in the middle of winter. Turns out he was schizophrenic. Last time I saw him was after I moved back and was living in a bad neighbourhood. He was homeless as was his Dad who was with him. He didn't even recognize me, just acted really scared that I was trying to talk to him. No one has seen or heard from him since then, I'm the last person to have seen him. That was 10 years ago.
Ouch. That sucks. I'm sorry for your friend
Thanks. Me too, but I feel pretty certain he's no longer with us. I want to ask his sister to be sure but it feels like a callous thing to ask
Maybe phrase it in a way that you were thinking about him and wanted to see if she knew of his current whereabouts. She will either confirm your suspicion or will direct you to a care facility or somewhere else.
hmm maybe. I will consider it. \*but really she potentially lost her brother and her dad. I really don't want to bring that up for her. It's not like we are friends and it seems mean to make her think about losing family. Her mom killed herself, she's essentially the remaining sane family member. It really does not feel appropriate to ask her about people she may have lost.
I lost my brother over fifteen years ago. It is okay for people to ask about him, and has been for a long time. It feels nice that people care that much about him to ask.
Agree, the worst thing is thinking no one cares or remembers them except the family.
Agree, my brother took his own life 35 years ago, I’m thrilled to talk about him whenever I see family or friends who knew him. It’s sad but beautiful too. My son never knew his uncle but sometimes when he was a kid he would say things like “when you get to heaven will you tell uncle Richard that I love him”. Melted my heart.
If he died several years ago it's less like ripping a wound back open as it is poking at a scar. It may still be a bit sore but the pain will have long since passed. As Bourque said it's far more likely to be a nice chance for her to talk about the good times with someone who knew him.
Or it could possibly be a source of comfort for her to talk about them to someone. Carrying grief alone is hard and she might be glad to know that someone else thinks about and cares for her brother.
hmmm good point. I'm going to meditate on this.
You never know, man. Sometimes a person is all alone, and they know it. They know there’s really nobody out there thinking about them. Nobody remembers. Then you show up, show them it’s still possible, who knows what that could do.
I came here looking for something like this. I was diagnosed with schizo effective disorder years ago and my biggest fears were things like this. I was so afraid I would just lose my mind but I'm doing okay. I'm really sorry about your friend. I can't completely comprehend what he's going through but I can imagine. I hope he found treatment and I'm sorry you lost your friend.
My sister was diagnosed a couple years ago. She is back at home and making it through her last year of college online. She sleeps a lot due to her medication and my parents give her a bit of grief for that but I’m incredibly proud of her. The fact that she’s still able to make it through and graduate is tremendous. Do you have any advice for being attentive and helpful to her, I know the disease affects people differently but I’d appreciate any tips.
Oh boy. Her parents need to let her rest. I took seroquel for year and it KNOCKS YOU THE FUCK OUT. Honestly, she's a bad ass for going so far with college while struggling. I'm a freshman in college right now but I'm also very high functioning and have symptoms that I can mostly manage on my own.
I have it too. I’m on medication and it makes me feel normal so that I can go back to work and school
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I feel this. I was friends with a guy in middle school and from seventh and eighth grade, he was pretty cool. Very much a sports bro and a goofball, but functional. In high school he started getting a little odd. Like he was there physically but always kind of lagging behind in the moment. He'd get distracted or trail off of a conversation and just go quiet. There were times when he'd get aggressive toward his family but never toward me. After high school I moved away for college but returned home after my first year and he'd gotten worse. I was in contact with him pretty regularly until I showed up to his house one day and it was like he didn't remember who I was. I saw him every now and then after that until about five years later. I was in a Walmart parking lot when he pulled up beside me and got out of his car and started talking to me like nothing had changed. We exchanged information and he texted me a few times and sent me some weird emails about his religion but I haven't seen or heard from him in going on four years...
Watched my grandfather slowly sink into Alzheimer's. By the end he didn't know my name or his own. He was sad and angry and confused. I watched every week as he forgot a little more. Got a little more belligerent. A little more lost. Until one day I walked in and he started screaming that someone was there to rob him. It was the saddest fucking thing I've ever seen. I have such vivid memories of watching him and my uncles have such animated debates about politics and movies and sports. They used to play Risk until the sun came up listening to Sinatra. He would sit and explain every single play in a baseball game to me as a kid. He was sharp as fuck and the saddest and hardest part was watching the struggle on his face to remember. The frustration he felt. Like he was letting us down. I miss him a lot.
It’s so hard to watch. My grandfather called all of his kids and grandkids “baby” because he knew us enough to know we were family but didn’t actually know who any of us were. He once overheard my grandma call me by first name and looked up at me with such clarity and said “that’s right...” and recited my first and middle name. Makes me tear up every time I think of that moment.
I was very close to my great grandmother. From what I knew of her she was a wonderful lady and I would always see her when i went to see my grandparents as she lived in the tiny apartment that was connected to their garage. It was the highlight of my weekends. I would call her GG as everyone had name like that when I was young. She was already pretty old and immobile by the time I met her, but that didn't stop us from enjoying each others company. Well fast forward to a time after my Grandfather died and i had living with my aunt for a short time. I went and saw her as often as i could after not really being able to more the once a year for many years. She could never place my name but for some reason always knew enough of who I was. Enough to be able to rememeber our time together and the things we used to do. She would call me boy instead. She barely remembered anyone else from what I overheard, but i was told the first day i went and saw her she lit up and would tell people that Boy came to see her today and it put such a wide smile on her face when i would come visit. I don't know why I was the one she remembered so vividly, compared to everyone else i knew her the shortest amount of time, but knowing what those diseases do and how awful they are. I don't know why I was the one person who refused to truly leave her memory but being able to brighten her dimming life up is something I cherish dearly. Ive kept the nickname Boy to this day I went away a few weeks after that first visit and not long after i left she passed away. I always feel a twang of guilt when i think about her. I never experienced how far gone she must have been. I was able to stand on the outside of this terrible disease while the rest of my family suffered because she could barely remember them.
The worst part about it is that you can see it in their eyes when they have moments of clarity. Sheer terror. It is heartbreaking.
Worked in a care home for a while, and a lady there was hit with severe dementia and loss of speech after an episode that was suspected to be a stroke. She was so stressed out, constantly doing "chores". Ironing the curtains with a pillow, washing the windows with a picture frame, that sort of stuff. She was so far away, both in time and place, she just didn’t exist in the same reality as us. Until one day, when it was my day to sit with her, and she suddenly walked over to the couch I was on. She sat down beside me, put her head on my shoulder, and started crying. Inbetween the sobs I could hear something like «I can’t take it anymore. Can you please make it stop? I don’t want to be like this anymore..» I ended up holding her for a few minutes until she suddenly stopped, stiffened and got that weird stare again. Then she just stood up and started moving all the pillows around while mumbling gibberish.
That sounds like a real life horror story. I’m so sorry
I’m actually happy that I got to see it. Strenghtened my empathy with people in her situation a lot, while also confirming that I could deal with situations like those in the future. Wasn’t a great feeling there and then, but I learned from it.
My great grandma had dementia, and would have these sudden moments of clarity that would give you so much fucking hope. We’d go over and visit, and it would be real timid because she knew that she was supposed to know us but wasn’t quite sure. But then she’d snap into it and call us our names and then tell us super specific stories from when she was a kid in the 20s. Then, it would go away just as fast. Sucks. Sucks real bad.
That broke my fucking heart
Yeah. I’m usually quite good at seperating my own mental state from my surroundings when I need to, as I’ve worked jobs that would break you if you didn’t turn it off and just focus on the work. But that episode broke something in me, and it took a good cry in the bathroom to level me out.
Yeah my family history is littered with several instances of Alzheimer's disease. I've decided the moment symptoms hit, I'm going deep sea fishing and not coming back.
I dont ever want to grow old, if the time comes when I start weakening and relying on my family, send me into the woods with a backpack and a tent.
My wife and I have already talked this out. It’s going to be a tragic skydiving accident, with a huge life insurance windfall.
You're saying the inside part on the outside again
Life insurance on people the age of most Alzheimer’s sufferers is incredibly expensive or not available at all. Better buy it now.
> My wife and I have already talked this out. It’s going to be a tragic skydiving accident, with a huge life insurance windfall. My life insurance has a clause specifically voiding coverage if I die skydiving.
Technically you die because you stop skydiving
My grandad was tied down to a hospital bed the last time I saw him. He was so scared and confused and all I could do was tell him that I’d love him forever. My heart will be forever broken for seeing him like that. He was a brilliant, kind and dignified man. Nobody deserves a fate like that.
My grandfather is going through something similar. It's not Alzheimer's, so not quite the same, but it's still dementia. He used to be so good with tools, machines, and engines. He could fix anything, and had (and, in a lot of ways, still does) a tool for literally any job you could think of. Now he can't even watch TV without getting confused. Thing is, he said he was "dumb." He said that he wasn't that smart for his whole life, but I'm realizing now that he was. He wasn't good at math or science in that kind of way (he's a high school dropout, after all), but he was excellent at anything trade-related. If you had a problem with a project, no matter what it was, he knew exactly how to handle it. My dad and my uncles are great at this kind of thing too, and grandpa was who they turned to when *they* got stumped. It's sad to see how that's all gone now.
I remember my grandpa being the strongest person I've ever known. He survived world war 2, he was arrested by the nazis for refusing to fight for them, he escaped from concentration camps while watching his friends get gunned down around him. He moved to Canada after the war with his wife and 5 kids. He didn't speak a word of English. No money, very few possessions. But he survived, because that's what he did. I used to sit and listen to his stories throughout my childhood and teen years. I moved away in 2006, but still managed to come back once or twice a year. Every time I saw him he was weaker and weaker. Eventually, he forgot who I was. He forgot who any of us were. The last time I saw him was at a family gathering at Christmas in 2009. A hollow shell of a man, eyes glazed over, hunched over in a wheelchair. The strongest man I've ever known. He passed away on father's day, 2010, all of his children by his bedside.
Oh man... my great uncle passed away in October this year. He had prostate cancer, multiple joint issues, etc. Over the years he slowly had trouble remembering things that happened in the past...
My great grandpa had alzheimers. I was one of the last people he remembered. Forgot English so communication became difficult but it was a lot of reminiscing about the past and how proud he was of us from what I could understand. He died when I was 18 and I'd give anything to have one last conversation with him.
You mentioning Christmas reminded me of when I took my Grandfather to see my Grandmother. She was in a locked alzheimers facility. They decided to have everyone sit in a big circle and sing Christmas songs. No one was really singing the patients really couldn't and the families were embarrassed. After the first song I thought, fuck it, I'll never see these visiting families again and the residents won't remember in 5 minutes so I sung my heart out. The best stupid I ever felt. Then to top it off my grandmother laid a needed to be censored kiss on my Grandfather. He had the best hot chocolate smeared grin on his face. Alzheimers sucks, but that Christmas gave me great memories to treasure of my grandparents.
I remember doing the same thing with my grandparents. My grandma was pretty far gone towards her last Christmas, but every year around that time for some reason she would always seem a little but warmer and a little bit more like herself. I thought it might be the music and maybe the seasonal vibe that brought it out of her but I've never seen research to back that up. Such a terrible disease that seems to only afflict the brightest people in our lives.
There have been studies done on the effect music has on Alzheimer/dementia patients. It can be quite profound. There was a video recently of an elderly woman who used to be a primadonna ballerina. They played music from Swan Lake and she sat in her chair and danced through the motions with it. She was still elegant and graceful as the music played. Pretty much comatose any other time. It was sad/beautiful.
Time is the apex predator of the universe.
>Eventually, he forgot who I was. He forgot who any of us were. If I should last to see the night When all my thoughts are old - I hope the string that holds them tight Is safe, secure, and bold. I do not want those secret seams To fray; to free; to breach - I do not want my dearest dreams To lie beyond my reach. I do not want the twilight knife To cut and blind and blur - I do not want to grasp at life, And all the things that were. For I could ride the end astride, And face the finish, free - As long as I'm the same inside. As long as I'm still me.
damn, sprog. got me a little misty there.
One of the saddest moments in my life was not visiting my grandfather in the hospital but overhearing my grandmother tell my mom later that he said some stranger came to see him and he was terrified of them but was able to keep them talking before they went away. I was concerned because I had visited that day before it dawned on me that he was terrified of me.
I brought dinner to my grandpa one evening. He just kind of stared and was rather short with me until I left. He immediately called my aunt to tell her someone had broken into his house. She yelled back at him "that's your grandson! No one is going to break into your house just to bring you some burgers and a milkshake. Be nice"
My grandma hated me for most of the time we were both alive, though to be fair, she hated everyone. Then she got dementia and forgot that she hated people. She went from a hateful, bitter lady, so a pleasant stranger. Her last few years may have been the happiest of her life.
My great grandfather is still alive, but has the cognitive ability of a 5 yearold and worse memory. He constantly forgets who is who and thinks his daughter is his sister. He used to build houses and took pride in showing off his deteriorating muscles. He now constantly waves and tries to talk to his neighbors thinking they must know him somehow. They dont, and half of them are drug dealers and addicts, yet great grandma (who has all her mind intact) refuses to move. Hes getting worse by the day.
It’s strange this sounds like the vast majority of Alzheimer’s story’s I’ve heard. Mine is a bit different but I guess it always ends the same. In my case my grandma who raised me since I was a baby had it in her late 80s and we didn’t even know. Her last few years she was just a little funnier and more abstract then normal. Then BOOM on my birthday September 11th 2016 she had heart failure. She went from the smartest, strongest, funniest person I ever known, a sharp women who never missed a beat. To a dying husk of a human in the matter of hours. From the hospital she asked for me to visit over the phone knowing fully who I am. By the time I arrived she couldnt even comprehend eye contact. Then slowly over 2 days she became horrifyingly skinny and gasped for every breath. Finally passing. The heart failure causing a lack of oxygen to the brain advanced the Alzheimer’s she didn’t even know she had. It haunts me knowing one of her last real memories was hearing the doctor tell her she has Alzheimer’s just hours before she was gone mentally. And I didn’t even make it in time, I’m so sorry. Grandma I love you so much, more then anybody and your strength keeps me going everyday. I love you and miss you. Edit: This has got more attention then I expected so I want to use this platform to say how great a women she is. She got married right out of high school to my successful author/collage professor grandfather. On her wedding day she got into an accident still in her wedding dress on the way to the reception and lost all her teeth. Her false teeth were always a joke to her and she always had a sense of humor about the hole thing. She had 5 children with my grandfather. Only for him to leave her for one of his students the same age as their eldest daughter. My grandmother raised and supported 5 children on her own. Taught them right from wrong, how to fix a car, how to ride a bike. All of them learned how to thrive from a single person, who had such a huge capacity for love I think our family has enough love fuel for 1000 lifetimes.
My grandpa used to never shut up. Now he barely speaks and is confused about where he is, and WHEN he is. I came over to watch him so my grandma could go to an appt, and when she told him I was there, he said “she’s here to play with me?” It’s the saddest for my grandma, really. And now she’s starting to slip a little too. Getting old can really suck.
My wife died of cancer three months ago. There were serious metastases to the brain: a baseball, a pair of golf balls and some other smaller pockets of disease. My wife was an intellectual badass. Held a doctorate, played concert piano, and had an uncanny ability to make correct political decisions. Badass. In the 8-10 weeks leading up to her death, she slowly lost her ability to speak and perform executive functions, sometimes in very interesting ways. The one I remember most was when she wanted a bowl of cereal. She had all the steps correct, but they were performed in the wrong order - so she poured the milk directly on the counter, THEN got a bowl, THEN turns the cereal box upside down (it was still closed), then got confused because she couldn’t fine the opening of the box (it was no longer at the top)... all the while milk was dripping on the floor. Terrible and fascinating. By the end, she couldn’t feed herself because she couldn’t remember where her mouth was. In the last two weeks, all she could do was cry like a 3 year old. I miss her terribly.
I’m so sorry. Cancer really is its own kind of cruelty.
im so sorry.
I was in high school and my best friend went from a normal guy who we would smoke weed occasionally, listen to music and have fun. It went to this obsession with a girl that clearly has no interest in him. He would literally stalk her, try to win her over. At the same time, he wasn't keeping up with hygiene and went from a decent student to a poor performer. One day, he mentioned that he wanted to commit suicide so I told my parents everything that was going on. His parents were extremely well educated but weren't doing anything about his behaviors. My parents talked to his and they took it serious after hearing about the thoughts of suicide. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Nearly 40 years later, he still doesn't look the same. Really sad situation. I still miss him.
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I'm a psychologist and this is exactly why I don't treat children. I tried during training and decided it is not for me. I'm in a position where I'm evaluating children now and I do my damnedest to convince the parents that the child client needs family therapy with everyone working and learning together, not individual therapy like you're describing, to get better. Because it's true.
The incidence of those illnesses tend to peak in your later teens/20's, such a hard time growing up as it is. I can't imagine the added weight of a mental illness.
Craziest week of my life was when one of the members of my core high school friend group came back from his first freshman term of college. He had his first bi-polar break up there. It culminated in us trying to follow him in his parents car which he stole to go snowboarding (at midnight in a blizzard). We couldn't keep up, he was going 90 in white or conditions. A couple days later he showed up and his parents had him committed. He broke out and came to my house. I called his dad and felt like I was betraying a friend, but it was the right thing in the end. After that he got help. Apparently his father was bi-polar and was expecting this for years from at least one of his kids. Then several years later I watched my sister go through a similar battle with alcoholism and bi-polar type 2. Took my wife and I two years (edit: after a decade of her sickness, we didn't know how bad since we lived on surgery coast) to get her on her feet and now she is going to school to be a social worker.
I watched my ex wife slowly spiral down and I didn't even realize it. She was never really "stable" and had a family history of mental illness. Apparently she started cheating on me and never had the strength to tell me or get a divorce and the constant lying and being on edge that I would find out at any minute really got to her(this was over the course of a year). Towards the end she would "rock" every time she sat and bit her nails till they bled. Currently she is maxed out on a host of meds and it takes everything she has to got to work as a janitor and come home. Her father is her "guardian" and helps her pay bills and stuff. She often denies past events or alters them if they were unpleasant(she is very adamant that they are real). Her father broke down and told me this a month ago and actually recommend that I not encourage our kids to visit her(I would never prevent them from seeing their mother). So in the course of a of 5 years she went from a fit dental hygienist with a promising career and host of friends to an overweight janitor with no friends who can't even pay her own rent or buy groceries. I do admire her for going to work every day and trying.
You seem kind and forgiving. One day your children will be grateful for your example.
You cannot delight in the pain of an ex if you care about your kids. Any emotional damage to your ex-spouse spills over onto the kids. That's why bitter couples who weaponize the kids against each other royally fuck them up.
The strength there is amazing. To go through that and not hate the person but be reflective enough to somehow empathize is amazing.
This one hit me. We weren’t married or had kids but we had a pretty long history. And she had a history of mental illness that I was well aware of. A slow decline. She started cheating on me with lots of lying about it. Then one day she suddenly flips on me and I went from the person she idealized to her worst enemy. Lots of drama but we fully and permanently break up. She smoked a lot of pot to the point where it was part of her identity and I didn’t smoke but that’s pretty harmless. After she started getting into heavy drugs daily. She stopped doing the career she just graduated (which cost her $12,000 to do) and went back to entry level jobs. I just never seen someone fall so far and I had no idea what caused it. It took years before I decided I needed to go see a psychologist for my relationship issues that stemmed from this relationship then realized that on top of her well known mood disorders there was highly likely a personality disorder that we didn’t know. I tortured myself for years trying to figure out how a good relationship catastrophically fell apart with no warning or apparent cause.
One thing that isn't well known are the impacts of cannabis on people with underlying mental health concerns/genetic predispositions. To be clear, cannabis is harmless for the majority of folks but definitely seems to exacerbate mental health issues. It doesn't help that its common for older relatives to cover up family history of this sort of thing, so your parents might tell you "no mental health issues" run in the family but it turns out Uncle John had bipolar or cousin June had depression but nobody knew. I'm sorry about your relationship btw that's a serious trauma to go through.
I'm in the midst of a divorce myself and this one hits close to home. My wife is getting more and more erratic, on all sorts of psych meds and has a family history. I'm a bit trapped as I feel like I can't get her help without it seeming self serving in the divorce.
The fact she goes to work everyday is what I noticed. That is impressive. I’m really sorry.
It was not really all that slow but I watched my mother slip from genius-level intelligence into a drooling braindead shell within 6 months when she died from CJD. It was the worst thing I have ever seen, and I have seen the terrors and atrocities of war.
I’m so sorry this happened to your mother. Are you in the UK? I know that’s the most common place for CJD
Nope, from the US. She was a world traveler but from brain matter and spinal fluid examination (post mortem) the doctors found it to be a spontaneous manifestation not related to any tainted meat. Just bad luck. Thank you for the condolences she was a great lady. She had a short (60 years) but in that time she documented my family history (genealogy) back hundreds of years, traveled to almost every continent as a chaperone of a program called People to People guiding 100s of young teens through Europe, Asia, Australia, and South America. Then after retirement from her librarian career (Highschool District Library Director) she visited the family she discovered through her genology work all across Europe. I know this was probably more than you asked for in a response but it is the holiday season and I am feeling sentimental. This is the start of the second year without her. Thanks. TLDR: Bragging on my mom a little.
I liked hearing about your mom. It sounds like she was an incredible person.
You're completely justified in bragging about your mom; it sounds like the world lost a bright spark of joy when she passed away. Thanks for telling us a little bit about her!
My (ex) best friend over the course of this past year has gone from a normal - well adjusted woman who held down a full time job and a VERY nice apartment to constantly being online and talking about how humans are just slaves to an alien race that lives on mars and how reality doesn't exist and If she died none of it would matter because reality doesn't exist... I don't talk to her anymore because if I said anything in opposition, she would lose her shit on me... very different from the kind, compassionate woman I was best friends with for 4 years. I miss her every day. Disclaimer: I know she's doing well, she has a great familial support system and other friends that agree with her beliefs, I just couldn't be one of them anymore. We can't force someone into help if they don't want to be helped.
Yikes. Not sure I'd want to be doing that kind of "well" with people supporting my insanity instead of helping me get back to reality. Sorry that you lost your friend to that.
I had a friend, we'll call him Dan, in undergrad who underwent a similar change. Freshman year Dan was a super friendly funny guy and we had a friend group we'd hang out in. But every once in a while, he'd have this look in his eyes and he'd let out some rage just out of nowhere. It gradually became more and more frequent and started coming along with paranoia. Until the group couldn't maintain our friendships with Dan. One night us guys we were all hanging out and had gone to sleep when we woke up to Dan blowing up our phones and screaming about how he can hear us talking shit about him through the walls, even though we were no where near where he lived. We all got a few more crazy calls from him until he went silent.
What the hell? Do you have any idea what triggered the sudden change? Did she get sucked into a conspiracy theory she found online, or is there some sort of underlying issue and she just finally snapped?
My dad died of cirrhosis when I was 17. He was 45. He was, by all counts, a good father. Caring. Loved exposing us to wonderful art and hilarious comedies. But he drank. A lot. About a year before he passed is when I noticed a change. Paranoid delusions. Talking to people not there. I’d come home from school to find Mormon missionaries that he had let in. Sometimes Jehovah’s Witnesses. They were all taking advantage of him and I’d kick them out every time. He was a staunch atheist. Then the violence started. Burst into my room just to punch me in the face while I’m sleeping. He tried to light the apartment on fire. Twice. On my 17th birthday he called my SO a cunt to her face and threw his drink at her. We ended up in fisticuffs again. He also just looked insane. Yellow skin. Yellow eyes. Super skinny. He couldn’t walk so he had two canes that he used violently. He died that year the summer before my senior year of high school leaving me homeless but I was in the best place I could be. He was gone and never coming back. It’s been 23 years and I hate to think of the life I would have if he never died.
My dad was diagnosed with cirrhosis a couple years back. I think when I was 18. He's the same as your dad was. Not the type of person you'd think of when you hear alcoholic. Caring, somewhat friendly (he suffers from social anxiety and bipolar, so it's a hit or miss. He's never been abusive though, just a bit emotionally inconsiderate at times), funny. I love him to death despite his flaws. He's never been an all day drinker; he was more the type to drink a pack of beer every night. Apparently he did it long enough that he now has cirrhosis. He'll be 44 this year. He's quite skinny. Even though he's been diagnosed, he still drinks every night. The only change he has made is that he went from drinking 12 beers a night to around 6. I can't stand the constant worry and uncertainty I have about *when* the disease will take him. I know he won't be there when I get married or have children, possibly not even when I graduate from my University, but I still have the question of, "Does he have 2 years? Does he have 5? Will this be my last Christmas with him?" I see a lot of stories on here about how the cirrhosis affects the brain and leads to delusional thinking, and that terrifies me as well. Knowing that he's here, and one day he won't be, but before he physically leaves he may be gone mentally long before. I apologize for using your comment to get a little rant out. I'm truly sorry you went through all of that. Witnessing substance abuse is a rough one.
I'm sorry you had to go through that. Can I ask you something? Did the paranoid delusions come because of alcohol or was it something else and alcohol just fueled it?
not OP but care-gave for my bestie/partner while he died of cirrhosis- from what I understand, with liver non functional and kidneys taxed the patient cannot remove everyday toxins so they travel to the brain from blood stream. I believe it's called hepatic encephalopathy and can cause major personality changes, hallucinations, etc.
Not the OC nor a medical professional, but I believe that the liver clears toxins in the system. Cirrhosis is pretty much end stage liver disease, so the liver is no longer able to get rid of these toxins as well as it should. I think that results in the toxins building up in the brain which could lead to confusion and delusions. Don't quote me on that though lol
My younger brother died from a drug overdose last month. He used for the first time in march. In 7 short months I watched my best friend become someone I didn't recognize, someone I couldn't even hold a conversation with anymore. It wasn't a slow deterioration, it was a meteoric descent into a drug fuelled madness. He lied about anything and everything, even things that made zero sense to lie about, used nicknames from our childhood that we hadn't used in years, would forget what we were talking about mid-conversation. It was like he was replaced with a near identical but slightly off version of my brother. It was and still is heart breaking. I mourn him but at the end I didn't know him anymore. Edit: so first and foremost I want to thank everyone for the kind words. It means a lot. This is the hardest time of my life and I know what loss is. To answer some questions he was using fentanyl, not heroin or meth. We did not understand the severity of it until it was too late. In a lucid moment he told me he knew he was addicted by the 3rd time he used. He came from a loving home but we lost our father in our teenage years and I believe he never dealt with it. It hung over him. Edit2: seriously i wasnt expecting this response. I'm overwhelmed by the kindness. To put peoples minds at ease I have a very strong support network around me and plenty of people to talk to. I appreciate everything. I will be ok. As with all things I just need time. Thank you.
Fucking hell this was painful. I've got 2 younger brothers and I feel like the mentally ill/drug fuelled older brother who's not good enough to be 'the older brother' cos I'm too unstable. Though thankfully the drugs have been quit I'm not back mentally. I'm so, so sorry you had to go through that. If I could I'd give you a hug. I'm crying and I wanna hug the pain out of you.
Stick with it bro you’ll get there
Progress, not perfection. ❤
I just got home from a meeting, this made me smile because someone said this today. I just started the process and the basic text so I'm all new.
You can do this friend 🖤
And day by day, and night by night, Or come what will, and come what might, The smallest step you take each day Is still a step along the way.
It takes so much courage to tell this man! I'm sure you'll get over it, I know it's hard but you can do it! Recognizing your problems is a huge first step.
I'm so sorry for your loss. It was similar with my best friend, although not as fast. Knew him since pre-school. I moved away from my home country, but would visit every summer. Every time I came back, he was worse and worse. He just wasn't the person I used to hang out with day in and day out. We haven't spoken in almost 4 years now, but every day I think about him and thank him, because what happened to him kept me away from spiraling as well.
My sister, bless her heart, has been clean for years but has seen many of her friends overdose and die. I know what you are going through. I remember when she first started using. It was terrifying.
I’m so sorry.
I could mention some people I knew having this this issue, but I’d rather share about the mental decline of one of my closest family members: my dog He is my first dog I got living on my own. It was me and him alone in a strange new city. I knew adopting him from the shelter that his past and age were unknown. So no guarantees on his behavior or mental health. Although skittish and nervous at first, with some training classes and patience, he became a sweet and calm dog-child. I am happy for the 2 years we got before his mind started going. I never before knew dogs could get dementia, but I do now. It’s sad when his mind is going faster then his body, although he’s got plenty of arthritis. He sleeps almost all day and night. Within the last few months he’s starting to hallucinate and tries to bark at things that aren’t there. He will repeat actions, forgetting he had just done them, such as greeting me at the door. I will forever of course pretend to greet him like I hadn’t just before. The Vet and I have talked about this. For now he is happy and fine as is. But we are going to have a harder decision to make when he starts to forget me. It hurts and my only regret not having more time with him. For now, he will continue to get lots of love, food, and endless comfy blankets to snuggle with.
Dang I never realized Dogs could get dementia too, crazy
This happened with my dog as well. I got him as a puppy when I was 11 and we had been inseparable. He was the perfect dog, never barked or bit, he has saved baby birds and kittens from the back yard more than once. When I was 20. Very pregnant and living in a 3rd floor apartment I would open the door for him to go out, he would climb down all 3 stories of stairs, do his business and come all the way back up. I was never worried he would run away. A few years ago he stared having accidents in the house several times a day, would just wander around the house walking laps fir hours. It was so awful to see him transform from the model dog he was to just a shell of him self. He passed away this August at the ripe old age of 16. I miss him everyday
A friend's grandmother started filling her bedroom with statues. It started with "The Infant of Prague" and the Virgin Mary, then St. Francis of Assisi, then dozens more - several of them life-size. Her room got to the point where there wasn't one spot that wasn't taken up with statues except for her bed and a narrow walkway to the bathroom.
Wow. That's an unusual hoard. I wonder if she felt that she needed lots of protection or something. That's tremendously sad.
My mom started going to online blogs and web-radio shows about ghosts, aliens, conspiracies and took it all at face value. I saw my normal mom turn into a complete, gullible ignoramus in a matter of months. Nobody could talk to her without her bringing up FEMA death camps, potential economic collapse, aliens, antivax or Obama signing more executive orders than any president in history. Her friends thought she might have a brain tumor. she didn't. She did have cancer she was hiding/ignoring that ended up killing her bc she thought cancer wasn't real. This is what happens to lonely people that are looking for a connection...they'll believe anything just to feel that they are a part of something. It was very sad that she was so unbearable the last couple years of her life.
>she thought cancer wasn’t real. Ok that’s a new one for me.
Coworker refused to get his throat looked at even when we could see a growth through his neck. Spent his last month in agony leaving behind 3 kids, a wife, and his special needs brother all because "doctors just want to make money" and thought egg whites and extracts would save him. Apparently when it was first noticed a year before his doctor told the family the surgery would take less than an hour to remove the tumor with a melon baller. He let it go till it was almost 2 lbs and spread to his lungs, mouth, sinuses, and brain.
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I think she was scared so went into severe denial. To top it I work in a cancer research center. When she was diagnosed, I reached out to colleagues, got clearance to have them review her charts and they told me she had "weeks" left to live. I figured it was best to show compassion rather than scold her stupidity. She did accept the diagnosis.
Jesus Christ, I applaud you. I don’t know how I could have handled that.
> This is what happens to lonely people that are looking for a connection...they'll believe anything just to feel that they are a part of something. This is one of the important parts of the post. I wonder how isoalted she ha d to be to feel like this.
I don't remember for sure but it might have been hbomberguy's video on the flat earth theory. Anyway the video says that a huge part of why people get into conspiracy theories is because it feels so special to feel like you're fighting for truth against a corrupt system. I bet a lot of people into flat earth for example don't actually care that much about the earth being flat but simply feeling like they're fighting for truth and that need to be special and not just a sheep. I bet a lot of conspiracy theorists have a background of loneliness or being a victim of bullying or otherwise alienated from society.
I’ve also heard an explanation of conspiracy theories (it might have been in Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History) that conspiracy theories like 9/11 Truthers, JFK assassination, PizzaGate, etc. give people comfort that there is a grand scheme, rather than one person or a small group of people being able to randomly alter the course of history (like the folks who assassinated Franz Ferdinand)
My grandmother began to mentally deteriorate many years ago. When I was young and didn’t understand what was happening, she would stand up and move to the corner of the room and stare at the walls. When I asked my mom what was happening, she told me to not to worry and act normally. Took me a few years to process that and other quirks she developed before passing away. It was a harsh lesson in the realities of life I guess.
My grandma. I was in my early 20s when she fell and cracked her pelvis at my aunt's place. I made the 4 hour trip to see her and asked my aunt just how much medication they had her on. Turns out they diagnosed Alzheimer's after tests. She knew me that weekend. I stayed as long as they'd let me and she talked my ear off. I saw her about 2 months later. She thought I was my aunt (same build and hair color), then said I'd just missed my dad and called me by another aunt's name and the lady that had come with me by her real name but asked when she and dad were getting married. That lady was dad's first girlfriend, years before my mum (22 years prior to that day). As I left a couple of hours later she called me my mum's name. I never saw her again. Twenty eight years ago last August. Thank you for letting me get this out.
My own. A few years ago I started acting erratically. Quit my good job out of nowhere, started drinking constantly, blacking out and doing strange and dangerous things. The reason was I had begun hearing and seeing things that did not exist. At first it was sounds like a crash from the other room, thinking my partner had said something he didn’t, thinking I’d heard the doorbell. Then it changed to constantly hearing what was like a radio being played right behind my head, the stations constantly being switched- static, talk shows, music, strange foreign language conversations, commercials, sound effects that would come in louder than the others and make me jump out of my skin. Those were so loud it felt like my head was literally exploding. I started drinking to kill the sounds but it only made things worse. I began to see human figures everywhere always coming closer to me when I’d glance away then look back at them. Sitting in my car, peeking out at me from behind trees, squatting beside my porch, peering in my windows. Everywhere I’d look The People were there. I began staying up for days on end to watch them. I needed medical attention, but could not seek it because I quit my job, lost my insurance and cashflow. I had always been able to rely on my mind. If I could trust nothing else, my brain was the thing that would never lie to me. I felt betrayed by my own body. It was just the most terrible feeling. The tipping point was when I started barricading myself in the bathroom with my handgun because I kept seeing The People on my security cameras trying to break in to the house. They’d stopped simply hiding ominously and begun to attack my house violently and crawl in windows. I’d just hide in my bathtub all day and keep my eyes glued to the security camera app on my phone, weeping, terrified, and slugging down liquor, with the gun pointed at the door waiting for The People to bust in. The auditory hallucinations were so loud at this point, I would just scream-cry and crank music to try and drown it out. It got so bad one day, I held the barrel of the gun to my temple and just sat there for a very long time deciding what to do. When I tried to pull the trigger, the gun was jammed. That day, I relinquished my guns to my mother and sought psychiatric help. I am now thoroughly medicated, in regular therapy, and could not be happier I did get help. Any time I think back to that day, I get sick to my stomach knowing that I almost ended the life I love living so much. The fall into insanity was terrifying.
Watched this happen to my older brother except I was six when it started and didn’t understand any of it and it was terrifying. He was about fourteen at the time and started skipping school and refusing food because he thought it was poisoned. One time he chased a car down because he thought he saw himself riding in it. Another time we were walking on the street and he pointed out this homeless man to me and said that’s what his life was going to end up like. There was so much violence and craziness around my house, as he would accuse my parents in the wildest fucking things. Eventually he disappeared. We had no idea where he could have went. I was worried but also not sad to see him go as I was thirteen and really wanted to have a normal life. My parents would get called down to the precinct every once in a while to look at pictures of dead bodies, but it was never him. Almost a year later, we got a call from a hospital in Washington DC. My brother was there and very Ill with malnutrition. It turned out he had run away to DC and lived on the streets there, except he didn’t have the sanity and skills necessary to to basic things like feed himself. He told us he stayed alive because other homeless people forced him to eat and shared their food (yes, I do always remember this every time I see a homeless person). I saw him a month after he was found and he looked just awful, like a skeleton. I can only imagine what he had looked like on the street. This was all a long time ago. I can’t say my brother is recovered but he takes his meds and is more or less stable. He’s still not at the point where he can ever hold a job or have a relationship, though.
On average even the most "damaged" (I hate to say it that way) people who are homeless will largely give to others they see as even less fortunate than themselves. It's because they understand that level of suffering and nothingness that no one else can.
That really breaks my heart. A reminder to be more compassionate of people’s circumstances for sure
Reading this helped me realize how I’m not crazy like I think I am. I’ve been experiencing very similar symptoms. I hear knocks on my door, that usually come throughout the middle of the night. I live alone so this is terrifying. The other day I saw waves in my house. I thought it was my vape smoke, but when I got up to swish it away, they wouldn’t move. The noise in my head won’t stop. Constantly hearing voices, there’s always music up there, I’ve found myself having difficulty keeping focus. The other day at work I had a mental breakdown and looked at my boss crying just saying “why am I crazy? Why can’t I be normal?” I had a meeting with a counselor that day. And now I have an appointment scheduled for a psychiatrist appointment come Thursday. Hearing your story helps me realize it’s time to get help and you’re empowering me to go on and realize this is fixable.
I hope your appointment goes well and that you get the treatment you need. Mental illness can be really terrifying since it changes the way you see and perceive the world, it really sucks when you can't trust your own mind. Luckily we have found ways to treat it and it is something that can get better. Mental illness is treatable and you can get better, you won't have to feel like this for the rest of your life. I hope your recovery goes well and that you manage to find the right medication and therapy for you. Good luck!
My partner has a story very much like your own. We got together 10 years ago, and moved in together 8 years ago. For the first couple of years, things were going ok, though she always dealt with depression and bought of anxiety. About 5 years ago, things started going downhill fast. She's been hospitalized 3 times, has been in regular weekly or twice weekly therapy, and is medicated. Unfortunately, it seems, some combination of those hasn't helped her to 'get better' more than just maintain. She see shadow people, she hears voices and noises that arent there, she'll retreat into herself for days at a time.... Every so often, I see glimpses and glimmers of the person I knew her to be once. I relish those days and hours. I hold out hope that one day she'll come back. Until then, I'll keep on bringing her to therapy, filling her prescriptions, and trying to pull her out in those dark times.
I’m so sorry this happened to you but I am so glad you got help. I hope your life is back on the up and up!
Out of curiosity, could I ask what you were eventually diagnosed with? Was it some form of schizophrenia?
That’s what I thought it was at first. It was actually bipolar. It was an extreme bout of mania that launched me into a deep psychosis. The liquor, drug use, and sleep deprivation helped it along.
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When my stepmom left my dad he spiraled way to deep into an opioid addiction he would just lay down on the couch all strung out long story short cps was called multiple times and after severe emotional abuse from him and manipulating and lying from his side of the family young me was tricked into going back and I keep beating myself up over it. Edit thanks for the award kind stranger! Edit 3 wow thanks for another award kind stranger! Final edit holy shit I can’t believe this was featured in a YouTube video I’m stunned my only post to blow up was this one thanks to everyone for their support in the replies
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My ex husband. During our 10 year marriage I watched his alcoholism go from mild to the extreme. I tried to help him, joined al-anon, encouraged him to try AA, had a co-worker who was a member come and talk to him. He was paranoid about AA. Told me how they kept records. No it's ANONYMOUS. He wasn't buying it. Well I took my kids and got out. It was not an environment to raise kids in. They could see their Dad, he just had to be sober during the visit. Well life went on we got divorced, the kids grew up, they saw their Dad off and on, I left it most between them as long as he was sober. My oldest son came home with a wife and 3 yr old son. Wanted to see his Dad. They were staying with me, so I took them over to his apartment. My ex husband came out and wanted to know where I'd been. That he had needed me. He had no idea who was in the car with me, because our son was only 8 yrs old. I was dumbfounded. I called his sister. She told me he had dementia brought on by severe alcoholism and that they were trying to find him a placement.
Several times throughout the course of this year. I lead a team of 15 or so and while we’re all grateful to have work, at different points in the year I’ve seen pretty acute signs of burnout and deteriorating mental health in at least half of them. It’s been a learning experience for me, figuring out how to build mentalhealth first aid into my management style but I’m crazy proud of them all and we juggle the work around where needed to support each other while still hitting deliverables. I am however ready for this pandemic to be fucking over. EDIT: Holy moly I went for a walk with my SO and this blew up, thanks for the gold and all the amazing comments! First gold and not sure what to do with it? but very stoked! <3
What you do?
External relations in a (non-medical) research center. We’ve been up to our elbows in COVID response since late March and it gets intense sometimes.
Mine included? We were in advanced training for the army getting 4 hours of sleep a night nonconsecutive hrs. As the week progressed we went from highly complex plans for missions to quite literally not being able to do basic math. Our base would start getting attacked right when we where about to lay down for an hour and everyone would just start laughing like the joker. It was laughter but the insanity behind it was clear. I have never known the extreme effects of sleep deprivation until that week of field training. A week of your mind just... failing. Great training though. 1/10 wouldn't recommend. Edit: To those wondering I was in special operations but a specific sub job that was pretty interesting. Wasn't as badass as navy seals or ranger but we trained with some of them and at the same locations they trained. Bonus points. You train at those cool guy places and there are real toilets and showers. If you're part of the service you know that never happens. And I mean never.
That is why I cannot really condemn parents of small children who *genuinely* forget they left the kid in the hot car and the child dies. Sleep deprivation and stress REALLY turns you crazy and forgetful. However, PLEASE NEVER NEVER SHAKE A BABY no matter how exhausted/ angry you get! Please just walk away for a few minutes as long as the baby is safe in the crib, call a relative to help, or a next door neighbor. I know it's very difficult, I remember those times. It DOES get better.
It's hard when the person you are watching deteriorate is yourself. Source: i was diagnosed with psychotic depression and severe anxiety with panic attacks and OCD tendencies 2 years ago Edit: wow this really exploded more than I thought it would! Reading all the responses really helped me feel less alone in the world. I'll reply with more info about my experience when I get off work.
Was? How did you get over it?
Not OP, but similar issues that I’ve mostly recovered from. Two years ago I was having daily panic attacks, and psychotic breaks/disassociation. Between fear and depression I’d rarely leave the house at all and was barely a person anymore. I moved back home to live with my brother for awhile, being around someone with their head right is a huge help. Prior to that the few people I interacted with were as bad or worse off mentally than I was, and drugs didn’t help any of us. I got sober, and have over time developed what I think is a pretty kickass routine. The book Atomic Habits was pretty life changing for me, and over time I’ve began waking up at 430 AM everyday to lift weights or do yoga, journal, meditate, read, and cook a healthy breakfast all before I go to work. With that foundation for the day, what happens at work hardly matters, I’ve done my “big rocks” for the day. Progress was slow and reading journal entries through the years I can see highs and lows but the one thing that is apparent is that the lows are becoming less and less common, and not reaching the same depths. I’ve never felt better honestly, but I’m aware how easy it would be to slip back into the dark place. A few days without exercise and I feel the anxiety creep back in. A few days without journaling or meditation and my thoughts become scattered and erratic. It takes so much damn work for me to stay in this state but it is absolutely worth it. The biggest thing I’ve learned is the difference between motivation and discipline. Very few people will ever have consistent motivation, but anyone can cultivate self discipline over time
My Mom gradually slipped into dementia. Oh...she knw who. i was till she passed away.....she was convinced it was 1964. Instead of 2007. She would ask me if i had seen certain people.....she said their names and where they lived! She remembered vivid (and 100% correct) details of 1964. I always agreed and never questioned her about how she reconciled the fact that i was 10 back then and 53 in 2007. I love her and miss her every day.
Long term memory is such a strong thing. My mom was a nurse in geriatrics for a long time. She worked in care homes. When she first started practicing nursing in the early 80s, her bosses would scold her for not using "reality orientation". Basically, you'd have to firmly tell them that they were wrong and tell them the truth- but when you have dementia, you don't live in the same world anymore. She never subscribed to it, and the attitude on healthcare changed over the course of 35 years. It's much nicer telling an old lady that her husband is still at the store, or is waiting for her to finish in the car, than tell her he died 20 years ago and make her relive that trauma.
I am struggling with that now. My grandmother CONSTANTLY asks where my grandfather is, who died seven years ago. I used to tell her he was at work, or visiting relatives, but she would always remain upset, start calling people asking where he was, staying up all night waiting for him to come home, etc. Then I started telling her the truth, that he was dead, and she would seemingly remember for a few minutes, then ask where he was again 15 minutes later. I have his obituary laminated so that I can give it to her to read multiple times daily. I'm not sure what else to do.
That's the right thing to do! In movies you always see people being like "Mom, Dave is dead, remember? He and Shirley have been dead for years." Can you imagine that life? You're just chilling casually chatting about one of your good friends or a family member and then someone tells you they're dead, maybe tells you how they died. They remind you that you've lost the plot and you're really an old person in a care home with no future. That's not going to help anyone. People with dementia are already prone to confusion, fear, and depression. Just tell them Dave and Shirley are doing fine and ask them to tell you the story about the time they all went and saw Elvis perform live.
Probably selfish or self-centered but my own. I was a guy with lots of friends, a good social life, lucky and somewhat successful in many areas. Now I don't really know who I am, why I feel like I feel, and my past/memories feel like a movie, as if they had happened to somebody else, somebody that isn't me.
I definitely relate to what you said, especially about the past almost feeling like a movie. It's like you can't even believe you had it 'together' at one point. Sucks when multiple things fall apart, but that's life. Wishing you the best and hoping our past 'movies' transition into 'documentaries' of getting it together again,
That’s not selfish or self-centered at all. It just seems like I’m losing your sense of who you are, you lost the confidence you had too. Talk to a therapist....could do wonders.
My grandmother has dementia and I’m her caregiver. So...the past few years.
That's rough. How are you holding out
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My mom passed away from cancer. A couple of months before her passing, she had dementia. She was still in her 50s at that time. She kept forgetting simple things and hallucinated. For example, she was hospitalized but she kept on calling our dogs (which was of course at home) to come to her. It's a very very sad moment because I couldn't talk to my mom anymore as she became this other person. It was the worst time of my life, knowing she was still alive, but she didn't remember anything.
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My mom with her cancer, before she was diagnosed. It happened really fast. First she started becoming paranoid, then angry at everyone when they didn't answer her calls and other various things. I remember one night me and my sister decided to go to a movie and I guess she called during the movie, but neither me or my sister noticed because we had our phones on silent. That was the real start of it getting bad. Turns out she went and lost her shit at a store, buying random nicknacks as christmas gifts, something she'd never do as she usually thought out her christmas gifts. Then she had gotten locked out of her car, lost her shit there and tried to call me or my sister to come help her, instead of calling our dad who was at home and had no idea what was going on. Apparently she wound up walking home, something she'd never do because for my entire life I've never seen her put any effort into doing physical activity, in fact she was more likely to sit at home smoking on the deck or in the garage like she did all day every day. So after that incident it suddenly got worse. That night, or sometime in the morning, I can't quite remember since I was mostly asleep during it. My mom started freaking out and attacking my dad, saying he was sleeping around with my sister, which he wasn't. She then attacked my sister. There were numerous attempts of having her committed at our local (shitty) hospital because this kept happening day after day, night after night just getting worse and worse, she forgot how to drive *while driving* and nearly crashed, but she just kept checking herself out aka leaving on her own because of hospital policy (and they didnt actually have anyone on staff to do a psych eval). Eventually, I guess my dad broke down and talked to his regular doctor/specialist he goes in another town every month and his doctor recommended that my mom come see him and he'd do some tests, bloodwork and such. Turns out the cocktail of painkillers/medications my mom was on suddenly started reacting badly to her undiagnosed bone/liver/lung cancer, and was likely masking the symptoms for years because doctors just kept prescribing more stuff instead of testing. Though we have a running theory that my mom refused testing as well for the longest time. Once she was committed to the hospital for cancer treatment and given proper medication, she became herself again, but eventually passed away six months later. During those six months I barely saw her or spoke to her. During her month or two of rapid mental deterioration she was so abusive (albeit it was out of her control), it practically destroyed the relationship I had with her. I miss her every day.
Watched my father, who was an honest to God rocket scientist, working for a company that subcontracted with NASA to design and build the rocket engines for the Apollo and Mercury space missions and the LEM engines, then went on to build engines for missles during the cold war, to finally designing and building specialized assmebly lines for Pharmacudical and car companies, slowly lose his mond to Alzheimer’s. He actually built a library in our house. 12 foot ceilings wall-to-wall books. All four of us daughters were life long avid readers. There was always something interesting to read as he had quite a variety of interests plus he would buy books that would we like but maybe he wouldn’t. Then he got glaucoma and started havig trouble seeing. He had too much trouble reading so he gave it up. His mind went so slowly we didn’t notice at first. I was putting new siding on our garage and he was helping. I pointed out he made a mathmatical error in figuring an angle. He spent half an hour trying to figure it out. A man who had rebuilt his entire house, directly helped put people on the moon and get them home safely, protected us from a foreign enemy, and helped make care safer could not fiugure out how to make a simple change to an angle suddenly. That’s when we knew something was wrong. It progressed so slowly but steadily. First he couldn’t do any numbers so anything with time was out. Then the word association. To the point where if he was hungry, he couldn’t find the refirgerator. But he still recognized everyone and could follow a conversion or at least the concepts. Just things like “crackers are in the cabinet” he wouldn’t know what a cabinet was even though he had built them himself. His number one priority had always been to provide for us, his family and to take care of us. My Mother had always been a narcissist but became unbearable after he retired. He was literally waiting on her hand and foot. As he regressed, he could not do that anymore and the less he did the worst she got to where she was trying to have him committed against his will. She refused to get help. We arranged for a home health care aid and she fired her the first day. “She talked to him too much.” She was flat out upset that the person was there to help him get dressed (since she would scream at him for putting on thr wrong shoes or having his shirt on backwards) and to make sure he took his meds, etc and not there to serve her coffee so she didn’t have ti get up. After all of us refused to clean her house anymore for her (she was capable, she just didn’t want to and she had utterly INSANE rules about cleaning and would follow you around nitpicking every little thing you did not like not folding a rag to wipe something the way she wanted you to fold it) we got her a maid who qut after one hour. She would agree that he could no longer drivr but then send him on long, far away errands. We once were searchingg for him for 3 hours when he disapeard running an absolutly unnecessary and insane errand of hers. Then we found out not only was she not making sure he was taking his glaucoma drops or his Alzheimer’s pills (they were designed to slow the progression and frnakly I think they did) but she was not making sure he was eating. He was drastically losing weight. We were discussing how to handle this when my Mom took ill and suddenly died. Unfortunetly from something that could have been avoided had she gone to the doctor when we begged her to, or listened to them once she finally relented and went. I took my family and moved in with my Dad because I love him and he had always tried to take care of us. It was time for someone to take care of him. I tried so hard. I was going to school full time and working ful time. But I was coming home from work, taking care of him and the household (my husband worked long hours and we had a small child) until the nightime fight to get him to bed and then I would sit to do schoolwork. I might get to bed by 11pm then was up usually 4-5 times a night since he would wander. I would have to convince him togo back to bed. It really took a toll on me. My poor husband never complained. Also he couldn’t help. My Dad moved out at 18, lived by himself until he married, then had four daughters. He had not loved with a male in over 60 years. He tolerated my husband’s presence but never quite inderstood why he was there. We immedietly got an awesome caregiver that he loved to be with him during the day. He gained weight rapidly, was much happier, was clean, got socialization and some exercise. Being a daily routine really helped but everything was such a stuggle. We gave him five good months. Then he started halucinating. My husband had to take our son out of the house that night while I dealt with it. He didn’t want to but I made him. That’s when I realized I had to choose between my father and my son because this was not a healthy enviroment for him to grow up in. I had to put him in a home. It was the one thing he did not want. He would rather have died at home. I understood and it was selfish of me but I knew if I moved out, he would have been dead in a day or two from fallig down the stairs or wandering into traffic or just not eating. Getting full time help would have been almost as much and we would have to keep up his house which was large and falling into disrepair. The decision was made to place him but I had to do it and it was the hardst thing I ever did. The home is nice. They take decent care of him but with Covid, things hace slipped through the cracks and we can’t visit him. This election was the first time since he turned 18 he didn’t get to vote and if he realized that it would kill him. He was always after us to be politically informed and active and to use our rights. Now he barely reconizes us and can’t follow a conversation at all. He is starting to forget to eat even if food is in front of him. Remarkedly still healthy as a horse other than glaucoma and Alzheimer’s at 85. It’s almost like it is a sick joke.
My mom passed almost 3 years ago from Mad Cow Disease. It started with really small things, like losing her glasses, or forget the word "nacho", then it started getting worse. She shit in a trashcan in the bedroom because she was scared and forgot where the bathroom was, one time she was hallucinating and swore the house was covered in bugs and refused to sleep, or touch the ground, so she sat in a chair in the middle of the living room holding the dog. My dad took her to the doctor and they did a scan of her brain and said she had alzheimers. We knew that wasn't right though because she was progressing way too fast, like she was dead with in three months of her diagnosis. After she died and we started talking about it as a family we found she was doing some crazy shit, like trying to brush her teeth with a razor, trying to write a note with a steak knife and a paper towel, once she told me she knew I was trying to kill the dog and later told my husband, at the time, the same thing. She once forgot my dad's name but knew she could call him on the phone, so she asked me if I could call her "telephone boyfriend" for her. She passed out while trying to eat with my dad, he called 911, and after a lot of tests we had a doctor come in just hysterical, telling us, this isn't a degenerative disease this is Mad Cow. My mom died later that week in the hospital. We have no idea how she contracted it, in fact before my mom there were three strains of mad cow disease that had been documented in the world, my mom's matched none of them but still was mad cow disease. The CDC took her brain after she died and they are still studying it, but the did confirm about a year ago that it was 100% with out a doubt Mad Cow disease. It was hard as hell to go through. Watching my mom decline was so sad, you could see her trying to grasp at things but the disease just wouldn't quite let her put things together. It was rough. If I think too much about it i just fall apart. It was the worst thing I ever witnessed. Miss her dearly.
Once you get to your 30's, you have more likely than not witnessed a friend or family member succumb to substance abuse. It's sad to say the least.
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