Before I could even get my mother settled in to more than get a new doctor, we have an experience like no other I have ever had with her. She has been told by this new doctor (I should say second new one, we dropped the first new one pretty quick) she is probably going to have to have some knee surgery and he prescribed her a cane to help her out until arrangements are made and she can get the knee replaced. She will need to see a specialist for x-rays and to get the final word, there was no hurry and she wanted to look around no matter how much I warned her she better take it easy with the knee hurting her so much. She has been putting on weight too probably from travelling, eating out so much and not watching her diet at my brother’s house who had always had weight problems, so she has gained there too. Certainly she was not exercising with her knee in such bad shape but it still would not keep her down. She agreed we would both watch our weight and lose a few pounds and we had no junk or foods bad for us in the house, but for now, Mom was larger than she had ever been, contributing to her knee pain and she was aware of that and always willing to work with me.  I always made sure she had her a treat that wouldn’t hurt her or I would make us a low fat homemade pizza a couple of times a month and Mom got her craved Pepsi with that. Pizza just called for Pepsi she always said. I didn’t understand it but today have the same craving, go figure, and I don’t eat pizza even once a month but when I have it I want Pepsi and I’m pretty sure it’s not psychological. Maybe I just learned to love it having it with her but anyway her diet was working and each doctor visit her weight was down some if not more than a pound or two but she was still real near 200 pounds, and it scared us both.

This doctor would not discuss much in front of Mom just as her last doctor had done, but put me off saying he would put her on Aricept and we would just deal with the surgery for her pain now and that each surgery and physical incidents older people had could affect them mentally a little more the more they experienced. Kind of like each bad event took them farther away. He said Alzheimer’s which was a form of Dementia and he could not say at this point, but the Aricept could possibly help. I was infuriated at him not telling me more and things I read in the library and online did not all apply to Mom and advice some gave I will forever disagree with, such as telling Alzheimer’s sufferers the truth always, such as their loved ones being dead when they do not remember that. This doctor though as reluctant as he seemed to talk, really gave me the best description of anyone as I learned the farther we went with this disease.

She had to have the knee surgery and I had been so very busy with moving Mom and the changing of all her financial and physical things. I set her room up as much like it had been at her previous home as I could. At this point Mom could still be pretty normal acting. She watched TV, had certain shows she loved, she could shop and write a check and deduct it from her book, although she never had a check book you could make head nor tails of, giving this one a couple hundred and one as much as $1000 twice within a few weeks. The medicines she kept having added were taking over 75% of what she had coming in. I tried getting her help with that but was told she was not eligible, I found it unbelievable but what could I do, only to find out years later that she in fact was eligible. My mother was the widow of a WWII Vet, and I saw people getting set up from where they left off in another state swept in and out like robots, but she was not given help when she needed it? This was before any of the Medicare Part D plans they have today. After Mom’s first doctor she saw (the one we dropped) helped wipe out our new bank account, she told us of a local Christian Organization that may help and they did. They found companies for people like Mom that would provide her medicine absolutely free, although you may have to change to a generic, still it was free and I was not working, I could not leave Mom except for very quick trips out before she woke of the mornings or after I would get her up, feed her breakfast and medicines and get her back to bed. She was always a late sleeper being on Dad’s schedule for so many years. I even mowed at day break to not be away from her too long. If she could see me she was ok but around back was most of the mowing, but she couldn't really hear it, or could think it was a neighbor so I would get that early. 

My savings also were gone although I had a small amount coming in from an investment; it was certainly not going in any direction we had planned. Mom and I had saved $20,000 together a couple of years before but when I moved back in with her it was gone and she said she had no memory of us even having it, and when I asked different members of the family who may have talked Mom out of it each one would point to another, so they had been aware of it but no one was accounting for it, but I was stupid for not putting it in a savings account where I would have to sign too, instead of letting it build up in our combined checking. I could have gone to the bank and asked for the two year transactions but what was the use? It was gone and I felt sure whoever it was had covered their tracks well. Mom gave so much money away over the years and I was so stupid I just wanted to forget about it. She knew it was all she had, the house was mine that she lived in and someone had even had nerve enough to get Mom to try to get me to put it in her name and she could get help getting it fixed.

I said, “Mom, I am not that stupid and I know someone, and probably who, has put you up to this, and you know better than that, they already have the money, they are not getting the house too.” She said ok and looked sheepish and I never heard anymore about it. I think family members working on Mom behind my back was one of the things that helped to cause her mental problems start, she knew I was only there to help but they would come up with big schemes and hound her and upset her until she did whatever they wanted, grand children and children. I was glad to get her away from them, the only time Mom was ok was when I was looking after her, it was only then she could relax and not worry about anything, I never told her about any problems we might be facing but the time I was away from her and the money had disappeared she lost her song and whistle, she would still laugh and be some of her old self but someone had stolen her lifelong melodies, They were gone for good now, and try as I may there was no getting them back.

Before we had moved to where I lived in the south, she had been hospitalized to have lenses put in her eyes and the hospital encouraged us to do the medical POA and they could do it for us there. Maybe they could see the beginnings of something then or perhaps it’s just an age thing with them, I don’t know, but I had never thought to do anything like that. As soon as she got released we went ahead and did the financial POA, too. It was like she was mad at someone, wanting all settled and done, making sure I would be the one to look after her and I think she really did hate leaving the house where she and Dad had lived so many years, although she had cried when they moved there she disliked it so much. I had bought it and my husband didn’t want to live there either, it was a horror to get out of in winter time, but since then she had made friends and considered it home for many years now, but there was just the two of us and so much needing done to the house that would cost more than it was worth. Dad had done a lot to it when they had moved in years ago but he had been ill now for years and it was getting to need much improvement.

Where I lived in the south was rural. We live near a wooded area where we could see a couple of houses but had all the privacy we could want which we both preferred and Mom loves to get outdoors as much as I do, and although my skills with gardening and growing flowers could never compare to hers, I always have to give it a try. Only the strong survive, and it’s because I overly attend them. Indoor plants for sure but out door ones too. Mom and I could plant something side by side and mine would probably die in the same soil. My sister-in-law gave me plants she had in her bedroom someone had given her and the dirt was so dry and brittle. She admitted she had never watered them and had had them for months, for me to take them, she didn’t want them. I am so thrilled, they are so beautiful. Within two weeks they are all dead. Drowned, I’m sure.

So Mom, against my wishes is out admiring all the space we have and all she can put here in this climate farther south and she walks into the woods where some mounds of dirt make a few pits near the pines and although she had promised to stay near the house she has paid me no mind and I hear her yelling for me and I run outside and can’t see her anywhere and call back to her.

“Help me, help me.” she calls, and I can hear her fear. It sounds like she is in a well, but I follow her voice and find her flat in one of the dips where the pine needles have made her slide down and fall. I see is she is ok and she says no, nothing’s broken, she just couldn’t get up and she couldn’t being so heavy and the pine needles giving her no traction. I cannot lift her and she is not helping. I kept pleading for her to try just a little to help me get her up because I can’t possibly lift her. She just looks at me dumbfounded like a child not understanding a word I am saying. I tell her I don’t know what to do. I couldn’t call an ambulance to get her up on her feet, maybe the fire department? No I don’t want to do that. The only person in the whole state I know to help me is my son and his wife and he is at work, I don’t even know how to contact him and his wife is never home but I try her number and her cell and I leave a message on both, which I have done before and never got a call back, she would think I wanted something from her, and she is not a giver, she had only wanted me here nearer her in the first place to be a babysitter anyway, and now I had Mom and health problems of my own, I couldn’t be a help to her so she was useless to me, period. I got that message pretty quick. I love it here though, have wanted to be here since I was thirteen and passed through this southern state and also visited an aunt with my parents near here years ago and have lived in this area for years but not this exact location. Mom likes it too and we have made happy plans, I have a plenty of room, inside and out which is something we both love.

My mind keeps going to the fire department but I just can’t make myself call them. But isn’t this kind of like a cat up a tree, honestly, I thought that, and I keep wondering if it is or not. I am in a real panic now. Mom is just waiting to see what I will do. The pine needles keep Mom from getting to her feet,plus her sore knee and if I can pull her two feet she only slides back down to the middle of this dip. My back is killing me by now. We have been at this at least a half hour and I would never bully my mom but I have to keep telling her she has to help and she keeps giving me this really dumb look like she doesn’t know what I am talking about. Alright, I have to get rid of the pine needles. I start digging and under all those is a mushy soft soil about as useless as the pine needles getting through. Alright, I run and get some old rugs. That will work! It does somewhat but Mom and I both are so worn out by now, but she gets two feet and stops for ten to fifteen minutes, her knee is hurting so bad. I run and get water and pain medicine. I have to calm down, this is the only way we can do it but it’s getting late, will I get her inside before dark? I am starting to get bit all over; bugs love me, but thankfully not Mom. I should put on a long sleeved shirt but I’m so hot and perspiring already. I just get a wet washcloth, wrap around my neck and slap at them every few minutes or rub at the itches I can reach. I just keep putting one rug in front of the other and encourage her two feet at a time. There are about six steps she has to go up at the back to get inside and I have doubts she can do it but if we go in the front way it is so much farther. We talk it over. Well I do the talking to her and get a blank stare, but I can see she is tired so she really has been trying, when it had looked as if she didn’t care. I tell her we have to get up the back steps if I can get her that far, is that ok? She nods her consent. We have been at this for about two hours, thirty feet at most, if that, and now there is the gravel driveway so I have to go in search of extra cushion over the rugs but we are away from all needles and dirt, Mom keeps telling me how dirty I am getting, as if that is the real problem here, and she is pretty dirty herself. I did laugh now and then as much from nerves as the actual comedy of this all if anyone had been watching. It seems the pain killers have kicked in and she says its not hurting so bad now. So we just have a few more feet to make it to the banisters leading up to the back porch. So close, but I just don’t know what we will do if she can’t help me get her to her feet and then up those steps, I just can’t see her being able to but I know we have to because I am going to have to turn on an outside light soon, meaning complete dark and my son said he had seen snakes sometimes when he mowed for me, me nor Mom would be crawling around the house in the dark! But I’d have no choice if we couldn’t get her up those steps. Besides, crawling around the house would mean another two hours at best and I needed to get in the shower so bad and something put on these bites and my back felt broken. The goal being so close or the dark falling or whatever happened we were at the bottom of the steps and now Mom defiantly wanted me out of her way. She could get up those steps. She meant well, and without that mental push we couldn’t have done it but as soon as we got her on her feet, her pulling on the banister rail and me behind lifting her up as much as I could, she hung on and although her knees wanted to buckle several times, she made it in the house! We went one room at a time with her resting in between and me supporting her the best I can but it seemed another thirty feet getting her to my shower which was the only walk in one, and only one she could get in and out of and I helped her wash her hair and got her back, then ran for her a gown while she finished up. I helped her dry off quick and got her to bed while I had my shower and doctored my bites and had Mom get my back where it was worse and I couldn’t reach. Cool Noxzema and it felt so good. I turned Mom’s TV on Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman, her favorite show, that would get her mind off what we had been through I hoped. I put some lotion on Moms arms and legs and gave her a good foot massage to calm her, we didn’t talk about what we had just been through and neither of us had even had supper so I ran and made sandwiches and a salad and a big glass of orange juice for both our hearts, it sure couldn’t hurt. I put her tray over her lap but sat in her room to eat which I never had, I’m not sure if it was because I thought she might need me or I needed her. This was a beginning of something I knew and I would never really know how to arrange it in my mind. Yes, her knee was bad, but something else was happening. That something I had asked her former doctor about a couple of months ago. We both knew it and I am sure it scared her as it did me. Yes, her knee had gone out but these last few hours had been about more than that, I had been seeing small signs I couldn’t even describe but the good thing was Mom wasn’t writing herself notes and she admitted something was happening she didn’t understand and knew she was changing, could death of a spouse cause this? She had lost her whistle and song I had heard from her from the beginning of my time. What would happen next? Could I help her? How like my Mother-in-law would she become? Did this affect everyone the same, or did personality have anything to do with it? I knew some but not enough, this was my mom. I wanted to beat it if we could; I made sure I helped her to the bathroom outside her bedroom before I went to bed, so she wouldn’t be up on her own this night. She had to get the knee done, that would give me time to study up on Alzheimer’s. Was this something new, like a new disease, slipped in from another country, or something that had always been around they were just now recognizing and giving a name to?

I had been through several weeks of this with my mother-in-law. I didn’t want that for Mom, I didn’t want her to forget me or get to a point she could look at me and not know me. I had gone through that with my dad after his stroke but just a few days of taking over for his therapist who had quit on him for refusing to cooperate with her, he just somehow got to know who I was, and I got him to working from day one. He was up on his feet with his walker in no time and although now and then he got lazy he knew he may as well get it over and I reminded him daily what his doctor said, he would be in danger of blood clots, and having worked around nurses and hospital many years ago, he knew these things were true and it would bring him up and before long I no longer had to be right at his side but would still keep a few feet behind him, letting him believe it was totally on him to stay up. These were mostly trips to the bathroom and I would have to help him turn his walker around so he could sit down, I would then leave the bathroom to give him his privacy and save me my pride. It worked out well and I am sure he would have walked again on his own even though he had had a bypass surgery about seven years before with a five year life promise, he could have lived much longer I am sure, and he so loved to fish I wanted to see that happen for him at least once again for the joy it would bring him. Out of a family of seven children though, one always has to be the boss and that is not usually the one who is willing to give the care and labor, so Dad’s care was turned over to someone who fed him and that was about all. He developed a blood clot in one leg and they decided it had to be amputated and then decided his heart couldn’t take it so he would be given morphine in a hospital and just let him die. I couldn’t believe it. I should have fought to stay with him and now I wish I had but this person had convinced Mom it was what should be done so I let it go, reminding this new helper of the things that should be done to no avail. Maybe that bothered Mom too; although we never talked about it I am sure she knew it had been a bad decision. She didn’t have to talk about it though, we both made sure from that point on that I made all the decisions for her. It was her idea and I so agreed. No one could decide for her but me or so I thought, but now I was up against something I knew so little about. Like many diseases if it were just happening now would she have had a chance with all the research and new medicines and even herbs that could have maybe helped? But Mom’s battle was now just beginning, we were both fighting for her as hard as we could. She would have her knee surgery first and then our first nursing home. We neither had any idea what we were in for.