I visited my grandparents last sunday and it was a really awful experience. My grandfather, 86yrs old, is sickened with something between dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, and his condition degrades from day to day. If I remember him from my visit in late spring 2008, where he was, as usual, busy working in his rather big garden, completly normal, and compare that with his situation now, I’m getting more than sad.
The outbreak of the disease seem to have started sometime in Summer of 2008, after he was visiting my parents in Eisenach and his relatives in Zella-Mehlis (both located in Thuringia). It was kind of his “final tour” where he was looking for known people and locations one last time. One event seem to have troubled him very much back in the day, the day when he tried to find the grave of his mother in Zella-Mehlis, but couldn’t find it because it was removed long ago; something which nobody of his siblings told him about.
The following months from August to December were horror for my grandmother, which is also already in her seventies. She cared for him all day, cleaned him and his clothes, went with him to several doctors, and while he was sleepy most of the time, he got active overnight and prevented her sleep.
On January 23rd the situation got unbearable for her and they took my grandfather into a nursing home nearby the garden where both used to live. And this was also the place where I met him on Sunday: He sat in a wheelchair in the corridor, his head hung down to the right. His eyes looked glassy, I think he didn’t recognize me at all. No smile, no words, almost no reaction. My grandmother and me sat down on his side and talked, while he was drooling on his pullover. Some time later, after he regorged the last meal, we brought him to his room and I put him into his bed with the help of a male nurse. He fell off his bed just a few days ago and got hurt on his right arm and hip, so he seemed to have big aches with every move that we made. It was more than brutal to see this once proud and strong man in this situation.
I talked to my father the other day about this and he told me about his last visit in mid January. Back then he still had some “light” moments where one could talk to him. After my grandmother left the room, my father was alone with him for a short time. He reassured him that they’ll give him some treat which makes the disease sufferable, but he just responded “How long should all this still last…?”
I don’t wish anybody to die this way and I certainly don’t want to die this way. Time will tell us if researchers will finally find something which treats this disease (there seem to be field tests at least with some special protein blocker) or if I have to put a special paragraph for this and similar cases in my testament later on: “Kill me, I don’t want to live on!”
[Update] My grandfather died on early Tuesday morning, on February 10th, 2009, after he stopped eating for a couple of days already. I’m sad; at least I had the chance to see him one last time before his death. [/Update]