Travel to Yesteryear

 If you could time travel to yesteryear with your loved one who has dementia/Alzheimer’s, which year would you choose?

If I could prevent the disease, I’d choose the baby years and do whatever was necessary to keep our little daughter from getting it. But science doesn’t know what causes it or how to prevent it.

Yet. We hope and pray it will be soon.

Since I can’t prevent the disease in earlier or later years, I’d choose to go back with her in time to when symptoms appeared. We didn’t believe the little clues had anything to do with horrible dementia.

About 7/8 years ago, I noticed she’d changed her signature. She’d written “Shelley Mc~~~~."  The first name and last name initial looked like her beautiful script.  The last part of her name was a squiggly line.

I said, “Shelley, what is this?”

She laughed and said, “That’s my name.” She gave me that, “What’s wrong with you” look.

I decided she’d changed her signature and dismissed it.

It was the first symptom something was wrong.

A bit later, we attended a graduation ceremony. She couldn’t find her cap-and-gown daughter in the group.  We kept telling her to count ten rows back from the people seated and thirteen people in from the aisle. She couldn’t do it.

I thought she needed glasses.

Little things begin to be weird. She forgot how to operate the microwave oven. She left candles burning.

She received two lumbar punctures that showed "no Alzheimer's."

 Her dad and I continued to deny a serious disease. We thought she was on too much prescription medication for anxiety. 

And in some ways, we became impatient with her. We insisted she could change, and we took her to doctors to get her off the meds—even to a rehab.

Now that I’m on this side of the diagnosis, I’d go back to the early stage and be kinder.

I often suggest to people who are in this boat with me to forgive themselves for what they didn’t know or understand.

I’m working on it.