Coming to a Nursery Near You: My Nana

My Nana

This week’s Carnival over at Crazy Hip Blog Mamas asks what charity is closest to my heart.

Now obviously, just about all charities are worthwhile, so picking one over another would be hard, when you consider how many “things” have affected my family. However, the one that sticks out the most in my mind would be the Alzheimer’s Association.

My Nana, my mother’s mother, was always my most favorite person in the whole world. I, as her first born grandchild, was hers (when I was around anyways). She & I had a very special relationship, a very strong bond. It was me who held her secret when she began to realize she had breast cancer. I’d help her bathe and get dressed, even though I really had no idea what was going on (which was probably why she picked me). It was me who helped her do stuff around the house, as we lived with her & my grandfather for several years after my mother’s divorce. Even after we moved out, we were always over there to visit.

My Nana worked hard, all her life. My grandfather was disabled early on so my Nana had to work. She worked in a buckle factory, making and plating buckles. It was hard, dangerous, nasty work, but she did it every day. After her mastectomy, she went back to it. After getting her finger crushed not once, but twice, in buckle presses, she went back to it. She never made more than $3.25/hr her whole life.

My Nana, at the insistance of my grandfather, finally did retire, and then things began to change for her. First, we began to realize she had a hearing loss. She fought us tooth and nail that she did not, but testing revealed otherwise. There came the hearing aids, which she’d take out at every opportunity she could. Then came other small things that, at the time, just seemed to be little quirks of hers. She’d undergone another cancer operation, this time a full hysterectomy because of cervical/uterine cancer. She was such a fighter, though! But these quirks we blamed on her hearing loss. She’d forget things.

She began wandering around the apartment complex where they lived. My grandfather would wake up to find her gone and have to go looking for her. Then he had a stroke, and couldn’t keep up with her. The decision was made to have her come to live with my parents. It ws around this time that I had my first child. She came to the hospital, and held the baby, but by then, we really were concerned that something was going on. She didn’t seem to comprehend fully that this was *my* child. She was even kicked out of a sort of “daycare” for seniors because of her violence. She started wandering out of my mom’s house. At one point, the police were called because we couldn’t find her. It was getting scary.

In early 1998, my sister awoke to find my Nana’s breathing was very labored. They took her to the hospital and had to sedate her because she was so worked up about going to the hospital. Unfortunately, we didn’t know it at the time, but that was when we lost her. The sedation did something to her. The ultimate diagnosis was pneumonia, and the doctor’s believe that the lack of oxygen to her brain was perhaps what drove her over the edge, but she never came back. She began a horrible descent into what has got to be one of the worst ways to die. She got lost in herself.

She’d not recognize you. Worse, she’d think you were going to hurt her and lash out at you. The number of times my mother wore the brunt of my Nana’s anger with slashes across her face, neck, chest. My mother took on the responsibility of caring for my Nana all the time. And when she couldn’t becuase she had to work, my dad did it. Finally, they were able to get help and brought in a visiting nurse. They all took turns watching her, and as I said, the descent was horrible.

I’d visit with my son, and she’d chase him and try to hit him because Alzheimer’s patients (women) see males as a threat. Perhaps something from her past spurred her on, but I had to keep him away from her. She stopped eating and dropped weight to the point that she had to have nutritional drinks to try to keep the weight on her, although nothing really worked. She was on so many meds, one to wake her up, one to put her to sleep, one to do this, one to do that. It was very hard to watch her go. I had to stop going over there because it was simply too hard to watch her die like that. She didn’t know anyone (I told myself), so what was the use?

Alzheimer’s takes the person you love and turns them into a shell of that person. It turns that person into someone you don’t like very much. It takes them away but FLAUNTS them in your face. It took this wonderful, gentle, caring woman away from us, one day at a time.

There’s some indication that Alzheimer’s is inherited. That means I stand a good chance of having to experience the loss that my mother experienced on a daily basis, if she gets it as well. In the days since my Nana’s diagnosis, there have been some advances in the treatment of Alzheimer’s, but not nearly enough. So I suppose it’s self-serving for me to support The Alzheimer’s Association, but I NEVER want to go through that. I never want MY children to go through that.

She left us for good on January 12, 2001. But she really left us that day in 1998. Thanks to this horrible disease called Alzheimer’s. It truly was A Long Goodbye.

My baby boy was born on My Nana’s birthday, February 20th, and there’s no bigger honor that I could bestow than that.

Tags: alzheimer’s, grandmothers, love, the long goodbye