Alzheimer's Disease - Essay Example

After a few minutes, she inquired again about my finals. This occurred throughout the conversation. I thought it was a quirk of age progression, but, as the months passed and the signs worsened, I learned just how bad it was. The following months were much the same, except the moments of memory loss increased and began to include repeated questions. It was difficult for me not to lose my patience as I found myself continually providing the same answers. My mother was growing increasingly frustrated at being unable to remember saying or asking something just minutes prior.

It seemed that her entire mood had changed, and she went from pleasant to bitter. When she called me early one morning, she was raging with anger, so much to the point that it took some time to calm her down before I could find out what had upset her. She had gotten lost on her way to the grocery store, a trip that she had made weekly for as long as I could remember. Through my direction, she was able to get home, but then announced a new problem: she lost her keys. It only took moments to deduce that she had tucked them into her purse.

It was after that experience that I persuaded my mother to see a doctor. The changes in her memory and mood had come too rapidly, and I stopped assuming that they were merely traits of aging. I accompanied my mother to her appointment, perhaps already aware on an unconscious level what the doctor would tell me. When he concluded that my mother was succumbing to the effects of Alzheimer’s disease, I was not as surprised as I had expected myself to be. The doctor informed me of the devastating journey ahead, so when I got home, I called my mother’s sister and we began to make preparations to ensure that my mother would have someone with her at all times to help her as more symptoms presented themselves.

After I moved back home and my aunt followed suit, I was able to see the depths of the degeneration of my mother’s health. Living with her required constant care, and the tasks of keeping up with her were weighing heavily on my aunt. Only a few years younger than my mother, Aunt Carol was worried that she would soon develop Alzheimer’s. For her, watching my mother meant watching her potential future, and she often needed my support as we helped my mother with her daily chores and activities.

The doctor had warned us what to expect as her Alzheimer’s progressed, but I was no less prepared to see the dramatic changes in my mother, once a healthy, lively individual. Her memory worsened, causing confusion, and simple activities such as getting dressed became arduous tasks for her. My aunt and I guided my mother as much as we could, but she was unable to cope with the new situation of her needing help with tasks that she had accomplished on her own for so many years. Her frustration grew and was only exacerbated when she could no longer recall what had initially caused her to become upset.

When I would inquire into her mood, prompting her to think about her present condition, she would provide me with scenarios that had never occurred, and I knew that she was experiencing hallucinations. These changes, while harrowing to watch, had been easy for me to handle. It was when she stopped recognizing my aunt and I, constantly asking who we were and why we had rooms in her home, that the effects of Al