Deflection

A cousin reminded me today that I have not been journaling much lately, since she enjoyed reading about my mom’s journey with dementia. That is a sad topic of discussion, since the brain continues to deteriorate as time goes on… Therefore, I will cover a little of my. mom’s dementia. 

The awareness of dementia is a topic that always comes up, since the word of dementia never comes to surface in our day to day life. Therefore, there are many misconceptions of what the disease really is in our environment. I am just going to cover one for tonight. 

I have had people come up to me and state that I should not be writing about dementia, since it down grades their mental capacity before they were afflicted with the disease. In other words, people do not want to know that their mental character has been destroyed.  The problem here is that dementia is a physical disease and not a mental disease, like schizophrenia.  Physical the brain is shrinking like the brain shrinks in all people as we age, but, as with people with dementia, there is also plaques that grows between the skull and the brain. Then, as the brain fluid flows in skull and brain and up and down the spinal cord, it does not flow like it does for everyone else. Therefore, this makes dementia a physical disease and not a mental disease. The decline in a person’s mental capacity with dementia comes from physically on what is going on in the brain and not from a mental illness. 

No one should ever feel that a person is suffering from a mental illness, since the way that a person is functioning from dementia a by produce of the physical disease. It becomes sad when people stay away because they feel that dementia is a mental illness. 

I have had people come up to me and ask how mom is doing that have not seen her for many years and they remember her the way that she was years ago and they will tell me that they do not want to see mom, since they want to remember mom the way that she was… This is really heart breaking, since we all age and we all need support as the years go by in our live. As for the dementia people, they need the intervention of our people, since they find comfort in the person involvement of others, even though they might not remember them any more. 

It takes a strong person to be around dementia people. As with mom, her house that she built and decorated is her soul, but she no longer reconizes her soul. This is just heart wrenching. it tear the heart out of a caring person, To face the person every day with dementia in their current condition, it takes a strong person. This does not even mention the extreme frustration of not being about to effectively communicate with these people.

Well this is a glimpse of one aspect of dementia. I guess that I should write an assay on this topic, but only time direct me into this being an essay. I do have an essay that I state about mom’s dementia for the past year, so I guess that I should complete that essay, since I know that everyone will enjoy it.

Roger