A good amount has been happening from when I initially thought of this page and right now, but I haven’t written a thing until now.
Their was a transition phase of me being back in the house full time. I don’t know what to say about that, but that’s where I’ve been. I thought I would write more here, little updates, my frustrations, etc. But when something frustrating happens between me and my mom, I either try to do something active, e.g. play basketball, or lay on my bed, take deep breaths, and be a little more zen about it all. Then go and apologize to her. A big thing that has helped lately, and I don’t know if it’s the right thing, but is viewing her forgetfulness, lack of speech, weird reasoning, as her brains fault and not hers. I know the blog is called “My Mom and her brain” but I didn’t actually blame her brain or see it as a separate thing until recently, and it has helped a lot. Another big thing to is not bring up condition all the time. We are very blessed she has a very humorous side and we can joke together about it a lot of the time. But I’m trying not to use words like “forgot” or “Don’t you remember.” Because she is forgetting all the time and not remembering a lot of the time and it isn’t getting her any better reminding her that she is forgetful.
A really big problem for my mom is her speech. She doesn’t pronounce words correctly, slurs words together, and combines to words to make a new word. Her stories have no context or detail, they have a lot of “this” and “that” and “those things over there”. Now instead of stopping her every two seconds, when she is telling me something, to get the story straight and make sure I understand whats going on, I let her tell the whole thing and piece it together in my head as best as I can. If I’m really lost in certain parts of the story, I’ll ask her one or two questions at the end but anything more than that is to many and it gets her flustered. The sad thing too is she knows the words she whats to say but she can’t verbalize them. And when you say the word she is trying to say, a third of the time she is happy and goes “Yeah that’s it!”, another third she like “Yeah that’s what I said.” but she said it in her mind and never out loud, and the other third she’s like “Uhhhh…” frustrated with herself.
Also I thought all of this was for sure early onset Alzheimer’s (which it still could be and probably is, given both her parents had it) but just a couple weeks ago she told me and my dad over dinner, she was at work one time coming back from lunch and all the sudden saw this white fuzzy and couldn’t remember too much. Me and my dad were really confused. Long story short, she had had a small stroke and didn’t tell us or a doctor or anyone that we know of for two years. I say this because the thing that makes me the most sad everyday and what affects her the most is her terrible word recall and being barely able to put a story together. And I wonder if those are the affects from the small stroke taking place now more than the possible Alzheimer’s.
CasetheAce 