I love Louis Theroux. His programmes cover fascinating corners of society not often spoken or thought about, including a moving episode where he visited people and families living with Dementia. His latest was just as compelling - Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity. A phrase that can certainly be applied to our own personal case of madness.
Dee's behaviour is becoming more choatic with each day, her behaviour a result of a much deeper confusion. She can behave in socially unacceptable ways, covering her strange actions by following them with a mischievous laugh. Dee has returned a couple of times after a trip to the local supermarket incredibly distressed after the shop workers have accused her of stealing, and those unaware of her condition think she should know better. (The truth is, she may well have meant to walk out of Tesco with that freebie, but the mental faculties to consider that an immoral act of stealing will have been absent at that moment.)
Dee's Alzheimer's has left us in a strange limbo in more ways than one. We're grieving for someone who is still very much a part of our lives physically, but mentally more and more distant from those who surround her with every passing day. She remembers her cat when she was a child, but cannot remember eating dinner twenty minutes previously. She remembers her deep love for Father but not their 30 year history together. She remembers I'm her daughter but I'm not her daughter, who she brought up in Richmond all those years ago. Does this mean she's forgotten me? The jury's still out on that one.
This limbo creates a moral mountain to conquer. Dee is becoming more and more difficult to care for. She talks incessantly, repeating questions over and over again yet incapable of processing the responses she gets. She becomes discombobulated easily, thinking she's in a house she lived in 40 years ago, hallucinating that there are other people in the house, forgetting she's got a familiar bedroom upstairs that she's been sleeping in for years. Her concept of time has disappeared altogether, no longer able to read a clock properly, nor accurately judge how long she's been somewhere or with someone for. She spends her time pottering around, emptying the dishwasher of dirty plates, leaving the freezer door open, hiding things around the house, suspicious of us that we're trying to take her money from her.
All of this and much, much more, make it harder to remember the incredible woman she once was, and act as reminders of what's yet to come on this journey. And yet, we're faced with the hard-to-swallow dilemma that she's still nowhere near as bad as she will be, which makes you think: do you do everything you can (as we are) to slow down the progression of this disease, or do you admit defeat and let it take its course? At which point do you decide enough is enough, that the Dee we all know and love is gone, and it's time to let her go? It's a tough question. One that probably has a different answer for every person you ask.
For now, all we know is, we're not ready for that. We are lucky that Dee was an addictively positive person - something that's held her in good stead for this. She's happy. Oblivious, but happy. And as long as happiness is a concept she can still understand, there's no plans to let her go just yet.
