by Carol Nissenbaum

Created on: November 12, 2008

My mother developed Alzheimer's in her early 60s, relatively young to get this disease. My father, in his mid 60's, never once considered placing my mother in a nursing home or even bringing in professional help until it was absolutely mandatory. I watched him change from a relatively happy, active man with many interests to a morose, depressed individual in the 6 years that he cared for my mother at home. I always say that Alzheimer's took both my parents, because while my father still is alive, he is just a shell of the man he once was.

Nobody knows how incredibly hard it is to care for an elderly patient, let alone one with mental illness and someone you love. These patients can be violent, rude, and downright nasty. Time and again my father would remind me that it was just the illness talking, not my mother, but her behavior hurt me just the same. My father became caregiver and jailer to my mother, the love of his life, to whom he was married for 50 years. We used to joke that she was a wandering Jew, but it's not really funny because she vanished on several occasions, despite my father's valiant attempts to keep track of her 24/7. He rarely slept during those 6 years, but when he did doze off she incredibly managed to go down the steps and out the front door undetected.

These episodes left us scared and shaken, but my father remained steadfast in his refusal to institutionalize his wife. He just installed deadbolts and placed a bag of soda cans on the door, thinking the noise would wake him up if she tried to get out again (it didn't). My father contined his descent into madness while my mother's increased exponentially on a daily basis. She regressed to infant-like status, even forgetting how to swallow. She would sometimes ask for her parents, and my father would tell her softly that they were both dead, causing her to cry every day. Eventually he wised up and told her they were coming soon, and hung pictures of them instead of their wedding picture. This seemed to placate her, but killed a part of my father. She had no idea that they were married; sometimes she would tell him he had to leave before her parents got home. She believed she was a teenage girl and that he was courting her.

My father had to bathe her, feed her, change her, keep her safe, every minute of every day for 6 years. Occasionally I would spell him, but usually so he could go do some vital errand, never did he do anything fun for himself, because he could not escape the hell he would

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