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Vera Frampton as a teenager in Stone\u2019s Cove, Newfoundland and Labrador, in the 1940s.<\/p>\n
She can still recite her children\u2019s names when prompted, but she doesn\u2019t ask us about our lives. Instead, she talks about her younger siblings, their grandfather who was hard of hearing, the isolated place where they used to live whose inhabitants were resettled nearly 60 years ago.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a phenomenon that\u2019s familiar to the loved ones of people with progressive neurological disorders.<\/p>\n
When I greeted my mother on a recent visit, she asked who I was, and I asked her name.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think I have one of those,\u201d she said nonchalantly, \u201cthough I probably have one around here somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her answer would have been funny were it not for the fact that after more than 20 years of Alzheimer\u2019s, her own name was the one thing she never forgot.<\/p>\n
I thought I had a firm grip on how vulnerable my mother has become until she ended up at emergency recently after an episode when she became weak and her heart was racing.<\/p>\n
Holding her hand as she lay on her stretcher, I soon realized she was unfazed by being in the hospital because she wasn\u2019t aware she was in a hospital.<\/p>\n
At one point a young woman in extreme distress was wheeled into the cubicle next door as my mother was cheerfully singing the Newfoundland folk song The Squid Jiggin\u2019 Ground:<\/p>\n
\u201cSays Barney, \u2018The squids are on top of the water<\/p>\n
I just felt me jiggers jig five fathoms down\u2019<\/p>\n
But a squid in the boat squirted right down his throat<\/p>\n
Now he\u2019s swearin\u2019 like mad on the Squid Jiggin\u2019 Ground\u201d<\/p>\n
But my mother\u2019s equilibrium was shattered whenever a nurse appeared to check her vitals or do diagnostic tests.<\/p>\n
The blood pressure cuff caused her to cry out in distress as it tightened on the thin skin of her arm. She clearly could not understand why the procedure was continuing despite her protestations.<\/p>\n
During other pokings and proddings, her eyes widened in fear and she wept. I felt a piece of my heart break when she looked at me frantically and cried, \u201cI want my daddy!\u201d<\/p>\n
I guess it is to be expected that her thoughts turned to the person who had been her childhood protector, even though he was lost at sea 71 years ago. How cruel a disease Alzheimer\u2019s is, tricking your own brain into thinking someone might yet come to save the day.<\/p>\n
I wondered if she thought that we \u2014 her daughters and sons-in-law \u2014 were somehow co-conspirators, authorizing and condoning the procedures she was having to endure. I consoled myself with the thought that she would not remember this trauma, her helplessness and terror, just as I would never be able to forget.<\/p>\n
There were moments when I wondered if she would die in this spartan cubicle, pale and frail in her flowered, flannel nightgown and her white cotton compression socks \u2014 glasses and shoes left behind in the haste to get her to hospital.<\/p>\n
So it was a relief to finally be able to return her to the carers at her retirement home with a prescription for antibiotics after a long and emotionally fraught day.<\/p>\n
I am buoyed by the recent announcement from billionaire Bill Gates that advancements are being made on the Alzheimer\u2019s front. In a blog post in June, he heralded the development of new blood tests that will detect Alzheimer\u2019s early on and boost the effectiveness of dementia-slowing drugs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe good news is that our understanding of the disease is improving rapidly,\u201d Gates writes, \u201cand I expect to see plenty more breakthroughs in the months and years ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a prediction I hope plays out in my lifetime, but sadly it is too late for my mother and the roughly half a million Canadians who are suffering now.<\/p>\n
\n\t\tWinnipeg Free Press | Newsletter\n\t<\/p>\n
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Barb Drummond, an author from Peace River, Alta., who writes about her late mother\u2019s Alzheimer\u2019s, once said, \u201cIn this journey, it wasn\u2019t her forgetting that broke me. It was the glimpses of her remembering.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s how I feel, too. I wish I could time-travel alongside Mom and lead her back into the circle of her loving childhood family, back to the snug harbour where she played as a girl and dreamed sweet dreams of life and the adventures to come.<\/p>\n
But all I can do is try to be there when she needs me, to hold her hand and let her know she\u2019s safe, wherever she may be.<\/p>\n
Pam Frampton lives in St. John\u2019s. <\/p>\n
pamelajframpton@gmail.com<\/p>\n
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Pam Frampton Pam Frampton is a columnist for the Free Press. She has worked in print media since 1990 and has been offering up her opinions for more than 20 years. Read more about Pam<\/a>.<\/p>\n Pam\u2019s columns are built on facts, but offer her personal views through arguments and analysis. Every column Pam produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print \u2014 part of the Free Press\u2018s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press\u2019s history and mandate<\/a>, and learn how our newsroom operates<\/a>.<\/p>\n
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