JOAN’S BLOG – FRIDAY, AUGUST 20, 2010 – EMPATHY FROM MY AD SPOUSE

As spouses of Alzheimer patients, some of our deepest sadness comes from our spouses’ loss of empathy for us. As they regress farther back into the child developmental stages, they seem to hit the ME ME ME stage and stay there. Everything is about them - their wants, needs, and interests. Our emotional and physical needs for companionship, conversation, rest, and sleep, become secondary to their needs. They live in their own world, and react to how experiences affect them, not us or anyone else around them.

For the last few years, my husband has been sinking deeper into the ME stage. Although he has been calm and loving for almost a year, he still has no concept or memory of how his desires supersede mine. If I was too tired to go to a social event, meeting, store, or anywhere else, he would pout and complain that HE wanted to go. Therefore, we went. He could not understand how I could be tired.

This changed when he broke his foot and my father came to live in the ALF next door. He has no concept of the abstract, but he does have a grasp of the concrete. If he can SEE it with his own eyes, he understands it. Thus, he has seen me running myself to utter exhaustion between waiting on him all day, and just as I sit down, being called to run next door to handle an issue with my father. This has been going on for 9 weeks. Sid’s foot is not healing well, and my father is too old for things to be going smoothly with him. I am worn to a frazzle, and have been sick twice in the last month because of it.  

On Friday, I have to take my father to my lawyer to sign important papers. Although the lawyer’s office is one mile down the street, just getting him out of his wheelchair into the car, me lifting the wheelchair into the back of the car, then getting him out of the car back into the wheelchair, into the lawyer’s office, repeating the steps again, and again when I take him out to lunch, is a feat of monumental proportions. Now add Sid to the mix. I certainly did not want to leave him out of a lunch date. However, taking him means another wheelchair, more lifting, taking them one at a time into and back out of the restaurant.

On Thursday night, my AD husband, who forgets 95% of what is said to him within 5 minutes; cannot follow a plot of a TV program or movie, unless it is basic and simple; and processes information at a snail’s pace, demonstrated to me that he still is capable of loving empathy. He said that taking him to lunch was too much for me. He didn’t want to see me do all of that work; that I was already worn out; and it wasn’t important for him to go to lunch. Those few words melted that heart of mine that I was sure my defense mechanisms against Alzheimer’s Disease had turned into a chunk of ice.

Yes, he will continue to decline. The end will not change. But every once in awhile, the person he was shows himself, and what a joy it is when it happens.

Feedback to joan@thealzheimerspouse.com

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The Alzheimer Spouse LLC
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