Guest Poster - Seth

Over the last few weeks I have had the displeasure of moving my wife's Grandmother from her home of 20+ years to a retirement home. This, unfortunately, was done for reasons of necessity rather than of preference. She is suffering from Alzheimer's, though, not officially diagnosed as such.

She's 83 years old. She's lived alone for some years now, since her husband died from the same disease. She gets to see her relatives with moderate consistency and frequency, but is not able to remember the meetings anymore.

We moved her to her new apartment two weeks ago, this coming Saturday. Yesterday, we moved her again. The facility that we moved her to did not have any openings in the "Managed Care" section, and they give preferential treatment to residents. So, we moved her into the non-assisted living section until an opening came up in the assisted living section" yesterday.

The saddest part of this whole process has been looking at the life that this woman is going to continue living. She barely remembers her own name. She recognizes people to varying degrees, but knows no names. Yesterday, she tried to open her front door, from the outside, by grabbing onto the deadbolt lock and turning it. She's not able to follow instructions, and while she can "read" words, the words hold no meaning to her.

In case you don't know" In the last 6 months of development, a fetus is consuming massive amounts of fat from their mother. This fat is used to coat the neuron connections in the brain. This coating of fat increases the speed of neural communication 1000 fold. Alzheimer's causes this fat to disintegrate. The result is a brain that processes information much more slowly. At this point, my wife's grandmother has the brain processing power of a three year old. Time is meaningless to her. "I'll be there in five minutes" - means nothing to her" you may as well have said, "I will be there in a year." It's all the same. She told us, that she knows that she can not drive a car (though she has not for years), but if she did, "it would end this"", she finished.

She feels sad when people leave. She doesn't understand that they will be back. She feel alone, but before too much longer, she may not know what that feels like. Her regression has a few more stages, and at some point her brain won't be capable of instructing her heart to beat. All the while she becomes more alone, more isolated, more confused.

If I am ever in that situation, I want my kids to leave me a bottle full of sleeping pills, I hope I would have enough presence of mind to know what to do with them. We as people should have the choice on WHEN we want our lives to end. There should not be someone trying to save our life if we don't want it to continue. Women can make the choice for their unborn child, yet we don't allow people to committ suicide. Why?

The woman I am writing about, may no longer have the mental power to understand the situation she faces, but I think she should have the choice of a clean, painless death. What she has now, is some indeterminate amount of time to live -read: exist-, being cared for by strangers, and loved ones who grow stranger.

She used to love to bowl. Now, she doesn't know what to do with the ball. She used to love to visit with family, now she feel out of place when she's with them.