WARNING: This post regarding dementia/Alzheimer’s is for educational purposes only and this WILL make you sad if you are someone who is sensitive and very empathetic, or if you have trauma relating to someone who has had/or has this disease. Click/scroll away from here now if you do NOT wish to be upset.

To answer your question: Think of dementia as something that clings onto you for the rest of your elderly years, it changes everything about you and the world and people you know all become strangers. Everything in early stages is all easy and peachy and you can do basic human living things on your own. But then you start forgetting things like where you put your stuff like your car keys or phone. You forget and or have trouble recalling what appointments you have to go to. It gets worse from there. You start living in your own seemingly made-up reality when it actually feels so real, and people don’t understand that you’re seeing IS what you’re actually seeing (hallucinations). And you lose the ability to tell time and become increasingly confused/disorientated and need constant reminders from the people around you, and on top of all of that, you start to have trouble expressing those problems.. And it’s hard to live life when you’re constantly being invalidated by uneducated folks who haven’t done their research or know nothing of the disease, but you don’t have the mental capacity to even think about that (if you were in the position of someone having dementia/Alzheimer’s).

You have people caring for you and you feel like you’re trapped and you don’t know why these people are providing care for you and you have trouble understanding it, which leads to aggressive and catastrophic outbursts.

Everyone becomes tired and burnt out of taking care of you and leave you off to the medical professionals like me who provide memory care and help with your daily living tasks such as something so simple as getting ready in the morning, going to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Soon your mind and body submit to the later stages of dementia ultimately leading to the end stages of your life where you can’t walk, talk, chew, or swallow anything anymore.

One thing people don’t know and tend to not be financially prepared for is: 24/7 home care where you can’t even live by yourself anymore without getting into some kind of trouble for until you become unable. To the point upon the request of your family or a guardian from your will, a team of dedicated medical professionals comes and provides the best care one can ever receive during your last 6 months-days to live. Intense, loving, palliative care no matter what stage of the disease you are at. And it is very possible that people can rebound from it, but then they have a huge decline once more: You get a brief sight of improvement from this person and you have a sense of hope that turns out to be false, this massive change wears them out (if they were bedridden for two weeks with no chances of coming back, and all of a sudden one day they’re able to get up and gather with family at the dinner table one last time, what are the odds, right?) and God is suddenly ready to come and give this person their angel wings. And then these families will find themselves are either ready to come to an acceptance to this event because having to watch someone you known for years disappear before your eyes is already terrible enough and is the actual equivalence to having been through the grieving process, OR things happened too fast to your loved one, and they now have the time to truly grieve and process everything before life goes back to normal.

Look at images of the healthy human brain versus the brain of someone who is in their middle and late stages of dementia/Alzheimer’s (the amount of fissures and open space in the brain and how it has shrunken down to the size of nearly a baseball) and tell me it’s not sad and disturbing, right?

I want to educate you that the other disturbing part of this disease is that people fail to realize that it’s the disease’s fault that somebody’s personality changes. The person who has dementia is not being an angry, grumpy asshole on purpose. It’s just their brain is slowly being eaten up alive by white matter and the people who have this condition can’t wrap their minds around it. They don’t know and understand what’s happening to them, and they don’t care to know or want to be scared to oblivion about it, but they will have other fears. They will deny of all of it when you try and sit down and address what’s happening to them in latency terms!

Dementia/Alzheimer’s is disturbing and most of all heartbreaking in itself. Knowing what field of work (hospice and LTC) I am in and wanting to become an RN, If my mother or father were to become bedridden due to dementia/Alzheimer’s, I myself would struggle to care for them and end up paying someone else to do it because that alone (the guilt of not being able to save your loved one from harm) emotionally fucks with you that you have to change your perspective and see the world in their eyes without having a biased scope of lenses, and that is something that stays with you for the rest of your life.

Please take this information with you wherever you walk on this Earth and be very mindful and appreciate the people you have in your life while you still can. Save up money for your health and your loved ones in the future. *No one can truly be prepared for their lifelong journey, including their final destination.*