Australian Women's Weekly

I have just been reading an article in an old Australian Women's Weekly by Susan Horsburgh about her father with Alzheimer's. I can relate to a lot of what she writes.

Initially he stayed at home with her mother caring for him. Susan visited them regularly and says it was  like death by a thousand cuts; nothing diminishes a person quite like it. She says her brothers did not find it so difficult. This is so true as each person perceives it in a different way.

The disease has not only robbed Dad of his memories, it has warped the way he thinks and the way he acts. It's so stealthy, it's muddled my memories, too, making me wonder when my dad ended and the disease began.

I once read a quote: "Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose."

As your memories evaporate, I imagine it's like feeling the foundations of your life erode from under you.

She continues by discussing the role of caregivers:

Beyond the memory loss, it's the personality and behavioural changes that have broken my heart — and tested my patience. In the media, the typical Alzheimer's story tends to feature a saintly spouse who happily cares for their often cantankerous, incontinent partner for years without complaint.

I don't think that that portrayal is fair on the carers struggling just to get through each day. As Dad's Alzheimer's took hold, it didn't matter how many times I told myself it was a degenerative brain disease, the repetitive, illogical behaviour could be exhausting.

Try driving with someone who recites the words of every street sign and billboard you pass, or finding someone dressed for work and eating cereal at 11pm, convinced it's morning and refusing to go to bed.

Try answering the question, "What are we doing?" every 10 minutes — for hours on end.

Alzheimer's isn't just forgetting your shopping list; it's being handed a phone and not knowing what it's for.

Dad once held up a crossword puzzle half-finished in his own handwriting and asked, "Who did this?" When he could still walk, he'd studiously step on all the footpath cracks like a superstitious child.

I'm not proud of it, but in the early years, I desperately missed my smart, sweet dad and sometimes resented the detached, insensitive stranger who'd taken his place.

These are all things many caregivers will relate to.

Later her father went into a home and the relationship between him and family members changed. Although, for the most part, he did not know them obviously there were times that he did and he knew that they were people who 'belonged to him'. Even now my mum is like that. Strangely enough she continued to know people even when her Alzheimer's was advanced and after she had gone into the home. George still knows everyone and about things happening in the world but has these other, cognitive, problems - as Mum did.