photo credit: stevendepolo

Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness.

— George Bernard Shaw

Halderol, Depakote, Aricept, Lexapro – these are the new words that I’m learning these days.  Never did I think that I would be increasing my vocabulary so quickly.  Welcome to the wonderful world of pharmaceutical mood enhancement.

To be fair, I had heard of all these drugs before because my friend May has a son who is bipolar and these drugs had been prescribed for him as they were trying to help him with his OCD and bipolar disorder.  The thing is, I had never really understood what each one did – I didn’t need to.

What has caused my newfound knowledge of all these meds is that my father went on a 4-day rage.  Anyone who came near him was verbally attacked and subjected to such vitriol that he is lucky that the nurses were patient and capable of dealing with him.  They thought that perhaps family members could calm him down but as with many Alzheimer’s patients, it is more difficult for family members to manage the patient.

Hard-won Understanding

In the United States, there is much debate about the issue of placing an elder in a care facility or caring for them at home.  Often, there is an assumption that if we had “old time values” we would take better care of our elders.  By inference, “better care” means that we would care for them at home.  The fact is that when it comes to some forms of dementia, it is easier on the patient and the family if they are cared for by a “stranger.”  For any of you who are “dog people,” you may have at some time watched the Dog Whisperer.  What our family needed was a “Dad Whisperer.”

One of the things that scientists have recently figured out is that the more we repeat a behavior, the more deeply it is imbedded into our brains.  This is one of the reasons that it is so hard for us to break long-standing habits.  For the person with dementia, some of their behaviors are also deeply imbedded.  This results in a bizarre situation where the demented person may be repeating the same things that they have been saying for years while not knowing to whom they are speaking.  (Do-do-doo-do, do-do-doo-do – Twilight Zone)

In my father’s case, this means that all the old judgments come streaming out of his mouth fast and loud.  None of this is new, but repetition doesn’t remove the sting – PLUS, our responsibility is to treat him with kindness because he doesn’t know what he’s doing.  So, I say, “Thank heavens for mood altering meds!”  They don’t stop the tirade, they just reduce the frequency and the volume.  Without them, even the doctors can’t control him.

Waiting for Answers

So now, we wait.  Having gotten Dad into a facility which specializes in diagnosing people in these situations, we wait for answers.  In reality, no matter what the answers are, the next step is most likely placement in a facility for people with dementia.  The hope is that if they can diagnose “all” of his problems, the appropriate mood altering drugs can be dispensed and he won’t need to be physically restrained for the rest of his life.

Where is the Resilience?

I’ve probably learned a lot of things as we’ve gone through this bizarre situation.  The one that seems most important to me is that even when you don’t feel resilient, you often are.  My part of this drama has been to prepare my parents’ home for rental.  This means going through EVERYTHING and deciding on the disposition.  (More on this in a later post.)  Every morning, I wake up wondering how I’ll ever get this done and every day I put one foot in front of the other, getting closer to finishing the task.  I don’t feel resilient, but I’m here, doing what needs to be done – and THAT IS WHAT COUNTS, not how I feel about it, just that I do it.

Often our sense of discontent comes from a mismatch between our expectations and reality.  For example, you know how much I love to fly – NOT.  When I fly, I make a point of being really helpful and friendly to those around me.  It helps me to focus on something other than my fear and if, heaven forbid, the plane went down, at least my last acts were of kindness, not bitchiness.  I don’t expect that I can banish my fear, but I do expect that it will not rule the day.

Please remember this as you face your challenges.  You can’t always feel happy and smiley as you face your challenges, but when you show up and do what must be done, you have succeeded.  That is all you can ask of yourself.  Set your expectations of yourself appropriately and you will succeed.  You are resilient.