I have been thinking a lot about memories since I lost a number of photos from our trip. I even commented to a friend that some things are just meant to be seen with our minds. But what happens when our memories vanish? When dementia takes hold of the thing which holds our memories as if it were an old piece of luggage that we have lost the key to opening it.
I awoke this morning thinking of all the beautiful people I was honored to spend time with while working for hospice. Especially those who had some form of dementia, from mild to the one we all dread...Alzheimers. They were my challenge people for in order to connect with them I needed to find out what they liked when they were young and I could usually get through the plaque in their brains to tough some magical place within.
One gentleman had designed airplanes and jets. No one could get through to him, not even his son who loved his dad very much and was so hurt when he had to place him in an Alzheimer unit to live. The first time I went to visit him he thought I was his wife. He got up and we walked the hallway arms entwined and it didn't matter to me if he thought I was his spouse. At least we had things to talk about. In subsequent visits I watched as he went farther and farther into the recesses of his mind and finally became non verbal.
On a whim before I was to see him I visited the library and checked out some books with colorful photos of planes and jets. I sat down beside him and opened the book to the page of one of the planes he had designed and also flown in. He turned his head and his hand came up to point at the plane and he said, "My plane." I was elated. He had spoken from that deep crevice in his brain that remembered one of 'his planes.'
I spent the rest of our visit turning pages in the book and reading to him the description of the plane and when it was used and what for.
The next visit I brought the book again. This time when I sat next to him his hand came up immediately and he tried to open the book himself. I helped him and we started on the page of 'his plane' only this time when I would turn the page to another plane that he had worked on or flown in, he would point and say, "My plane."
I called his son and told him that he may want to bring some of his dad's model planes to put in his room and center his conversations around the planes. He did as I suggested and soon his dad was talking to him once more, but only about planes.
I don't know why it worked. I was continually in awe of breaking through to my patients with Alzhiemers. Sometimes it was me who found the key, sometimes it was the nurse, sometimes it was the social worker and sometimes it was the hospice volunteer. This team of people who dedicated themselves to giving the best care they could tried and tried to find a way to break into the mind riddled with the plaque of dementia.
This beautiful mind of my patient connected with flight. Something that was at the core of who he was. The very last time I saw him he was laying in bed, curled up in a fetal position. I had brought a book with me that I had bought which actually mentioned his name as having been instrumental in the building and test fights of 'his plane.' I read quite a bit of the book to him and then told him that he was about to take flight without a plane and how exciting was that! He barely reached his hand up and I took hold of it and I sat there for a long time in silence. Then I began to sing to hymn I recalled from my childhood, "I'll Fly Away" and when I finished the song his grip on my hand loosened and I knew we has getting ready to fly away. I called his nurse and his son. It wasn't long after they arrived that he indeed took flight from this world.
I gave the book to his son. I cried. He cried. Not for sadness, but for the joy that the beautiful man was now with his wife in the place beyond here. His mind was clear once again. His memories totally intact.
Being in the depths of Carlsbad Caverns was like trying to find my way through that plaque of Alzheimers. We spent a very long amount of time in the Big room, yet one wouldn't think we were in the same room because when you look at a formation from a different angle, it looks totally different. When I was a little girl we visited the Caverns and it was at a time when we had to go with a guide. We got so far into the caverns and the lights would be turned out. You couldn't see anything at all. I remember thinking, how in the world did the early explorers ever find their way out of the caverns. They did it with ropes and head lanterns. They mapped the caverns inch by inch, following their headlamps.
Going deep where there is no natural lighting.
I didn't set out to write about dementia, just memories. Make some great ones on the rest of your journey here on earth. You just might need them to connect with your loved ones some day.
Check this site out about memory study today:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/what-scientists-now-know-about-repairing-memories-1566240/?no-ist
