Fading Angel
Not all of us have the luxury of caregiving being a process. Many times, we find ourselves thrust into difficult and unfamiliar situations when it comes to Dementia. A caregiver is often something you become, something you learn with time and experience. A lot of times the job may not be what we thought we wanted, and a lot of times it can turn out to be a very positive, very meaningful thing. It is good to remember this. Steve Slon has written a very touching true story about Sande Donahue’s transition into full time Alzheimer’s caregiver for her Mother. Sande’s Father had been taking care of her Mother for the first eight years of her diagnosis, he asked Sande to take over. Sande ended up caring for her Mother’s final seven years of life.
She writes about her learning process and adjustments, and the joy and heartache that comes with caregiving. Her book is titled “Fading Angel: A chronicle of love”, and in it she writes about her Mother’s life. Sande was quoted as saying that what was overwhelming and hard at first turned out to be one of the richest experiences of her life. At the close, Slon observes the toll that caregiving can take on people and families. He asks about what the future looks like for medicine, for life extension of Alzheimer’s patients, and what this means.
Sure enough, a few weeks later, her dad arrived at Sande’s home in the Chicago suburbs with his wife in tow. He stayed a week, then went back to his Florida condo, alone.
“I was blindsided,“ admits Sande. For one thing, her laconic dad had never discussed the day-to-day experience of living with an Alzheimer’s patient. But, Sande, now 67, doubts he could have equipped her for the challenges that lay ahead even if he’d given her full written instructions. “I don’t think anybody is ever prepared,“ she says.
Within a few days, Sande got her first taste of how difficult life would be when her mother wandered off alone. A frantic countywide search ultimately turned up her mother safe and sound at the local mall. Still, it was an awakening. Over time, Sande adjusted. She became an expert in Alzheimer’s Disease in a way that only people who live with a patient day in and day out can be.
She invented a kind of occupational therapy that cleverly focused on the vestiges of memory that her mother still possessed. Long ago her mother had been a bookkeeper. So Sande would give her mom an accounting ledger and stacks of cancelled checks and invite her to “do the books.“ This and other activities would pleasantly fill up the long slow hours of the patient’s day.
AlzCare provides caring treatment for Alzheimer’s patients in Texas. We have offices in San Antonio, Waco, Victoria, New Braunfels, and San Marcus.
