Vascular Dementia
My gran has Vascular Dementia. She had a fall over a month ago and it’s only now that we have a name for what’s been happening to her since.
I’ve never heard of it before although it’s the second most common form of dementia after Alzheimer’s Disease. It’s pretty much the same thing, other than the decline from here on is stepped rather than a gradual journey. Things will happen that takes her mental and physical state downwards - a fall, a stroke or a seizure will take her to the next stage.
She’s always been such a strong woman, I think anyone who has lived through a war doing what she did deserves some attention. The consultant tells us that he is staggered she’s still with us. A stroke on her way to see an eye specialist (she has had one eye almost permanently closed since the fall that started this) was the most recent of these steps of decline. That has put pay to any hope of her ever returning to her home and the simple life she knows - just her and her cat.
She’s in a care home. For two weeks initially to assess if she does ‘deserve’ such close care. Ironically, it would appear that the health service doesn’t really want to offer full time care and she certainly doesn’t want to accept it.
I WILL go to see her this week. For my dad. My guilt is not with not visiting more - it’s with myself for not really wanting to visit at all. Dementia seems one of the most cruel illnesses to me - watching someone you’ve known for every day of your life changing before your eyes to somebody unrecognisable and with no common ground to speak of.
I have some wonderful memories of my Gran - caravan holidays in Cornwall and Yorkshire. Family meals around their extendable table with Mateus Rose on Sundays and at Christmas. The best mince pies I have ever tasted. Marks and Spencer chocolate teacakes for tea and us all screwing up the wrappers and throwing them into the lamp shade. Roast potatoes and gravy that I have never been able to replicate. Homemade apple pie and cream with tea on a picnic. The best Thermos flasks. Learning war songs in the back of the car on a Sunday afternoon. Polperro clifftop footpath. Malvern Hills. Weetabix with warm milk. Chocolate Digestives. 2-finger Kit-Kats.
There are symptoms that I don’t know how to cope with. Not recognising me. Asking why we’ve put a cat on her table when actually it’s a jug of water. Hardest of all is that she tells us that the love of her life, my grandad sits in the chair next to her bed all night, every night reading a book. My grandad died sixteen years ago. Is what she’s experiencing there a comfort or is it torture? I fear we’ll never know.
