Category Archives: Human interest

When Your Mom Forgets Who You Are

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I’ll never forget the moment when I realized my mother no longer knew who I was. For every child of a parent with Alzheimer’s, that reality is a devastating one. How could she not recognize me? Her smile was friendly, but her eyes seemed vacant. She appeared confused. She seemed to be asking: Who is this stranger sitting beside me?

I thought of my mother as I watched 59-year-old Tennessee Volunteers coach Pat Summitt announce that she was resigning. For nearly four decades, she had coached the women’s basketball team she loved. The AP reported she was suffering from early-onset dementia. It had reportedly been causing her memory problems. As I watched Coach Summitt courageously announce that “the time has come to step into a new role,” I couldn’t stop thinking of the lost look in my mother’s eyes.

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Alzheimer’s caregivers often suffer in secret

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Nearly every day, Kathy Eslinger takes her lunch break and drives to Whitehall Manor. Her mother recognizes her but doesn’t remember her name.

Eslinger combs her mother’s hair. She sings to her. And when the 85-year-old Alzheimer’s patient yells in fright, Eslinger cries.

“You never know one moment to the next how it’s going to be,” she said Friday, fresh from a good visit with her mother, Rose Doddy.

For family members, Alzheimer’s is as frustrating a disease as it is heart-breaking. Those emotions played out last week in the tragic story of Charles Snelling, a prominent Republican and lifelong patron of the Lehigh Valley. He was found dead Thursday, along with his ailing wife, Adrienne, in their Upper Macungie Township home.

If the Snelling family’s suspicions are true — that he ended her life and his own in anguish over her declining state — his death is a chilling portrait of the stresses saddling caregivers.

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Alzheimer’s at 39

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Michael Ellenbogen was 39 when he first started forgetting little things—acronyms related to his business, work meetings and phone numbers.

“I was always very good in the sense that I could remember everything,” Ellenbogen said.  “I didn’t have to write anything down.  I would just remember it.  And then I started forgetting the names of my employees.  I even started to stutter trying to say my own name.”

In the beginning, Ellenbogen’s wife Shari said she wasn’t overly concerned.  “When he kept saying he was forgetting things, I would say, ‘Oh, I forget things, too,’” said Shari Ellenbogen, a nurse at Doylestown Hospital in Pennsylvania.  She believed it was simply a natural consequence of growing older.

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What If It’s Alzheimer’s?

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More than five million Americans are currently living with Alzheimer’s disease. It takes an average of 30 months from the time family members notice the first symptoms of dementia until the person is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. There are several reasons for this, but one of the principal ones is that family members hesitate to take their loved one to a doctor, fearing that the diagnosis will in fact turn out to be Alzheimer’s.

Alzheimer’s is, above all, an insidious illness. It begins with very mild symptoms — things we all do from time to time, such as forgetting to turn off the stove, temporarily forgetting an acquaintance’s name, or misplacing the car keys. But for the person with dementia, these events will become more frequent, and with time more serious symptoms will appear.

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Alzheimer’s Association volunteer encourages others to get involved

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Tom Paul has never had to personally deal with Alzheimer’s although he has certainly felt the pain it brings.

A relative by marriage who had been caring for his wife with Alzheimer’s could not accept the fact he would have to put her in a nursing home. So he shot her and turned the gun on himself, taking his own life as well.

That was a wake-up call for Paul, who realized Alzheimer’s patients are not the only ones who suffer — their relatives, friends and especially caregivers — do as well.

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Alzheimer’s disease eats away at enjoyment of food

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Imagine sitting down to breakfast and realizing your wife has no idea how to butter her toast. Or that your husband can’t identify that favorite pot roast dinner you’ve served.

When a loved one with Alzheimer’s begins to lose mealtime skills, it can be heartbreaking for family members. As the disease progresses, the sense of taste and smell is diminished and appetite decreases. It soon becomes difficult to recognize food items and to use utensils.

“People may not realize that for someone with Alzheimer’s it’s not what is seen, but what is not understood,” says Sarah Spaulding, spokeswoman for the Colorado chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association in Denver. “Someone may see food on the plate, but have no idea what to do with it.”

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