Signs and (of) Denial

Oh, denial!  It is a stage in everything that we face in our lives, good and bad.  We see the signs of what’s ahead or what’s afoot and we don’t want to recognize them.  We gloss over them or totally ignore them or chalk them up to a “passing phase”.

I know this only too well.  My family is so loving and accepting that my daughter was 10 years old before she was diagnosed with epilepsy.  For years my call to her was “Earth to Jessie” because she was sitting right in front of me and not responding.  Grandma and Grandpa, aunts, uncles and cousins, we all said the same thing, “It’s just Jessie.”

It wasn’t until Jessie was 10 and she had a complex partial seizure lasting about 20 minutes that we realized something was wrong.  I finally took her to the doctor and started the long journey that continues to this day.

Years ago, Daddy realized that memory problems were interfering with his ability to do his job.  As a teacher and head of the science department at a local high school, he was missing meetings that he had scheduled and forgetting the names of his students and co-workers.  He retired at the age of 61 and unknowingly started his journey into Alzheimer’s.

You would think that we, as a family, would learn from the past.  Well, we’re still those “accepting” people that we’ve always been.  Mom lived with my brother for 24 years and during the last 10 or so years there, she began her journey – but we were oblivious.

I can’t tell you the order of the changes because, of course, we weren’t keeping track.  As long as she continued with her normal schedule of eating and sleeping, we figured she was doing too well to need help.  Truth was that things were changing even though the schedule wasn’t.

She had problems with dizziness so we moved her to the main floor to avoid steps.  She developed problems with constipation and talked about it a lot in inappropriate places.  She heard a doctor on TV say that an aspirin a day was good for you so, unbeknownst to us, she decided to take an aspirin each day – a regular one, not a baby aspirin.  Next thing we know she stops going to church because she’s filling the toilet with blood whenever she has a bowel movement.  The list of changes goes on and on but we were all in denial because her schedule hadn’t changed.

Please don’t think we ignored the problems.  I took her to the doctor for many problems and we fixed everything we could – hiding the aspirins that were helping the constipation aggravate her hemorrhoids, getting her on stool softeners, encouraging her to walk around the house to keep moving and eliminate some of her pain caused by sitting too much.  Truth was, though, we were fixing issues but not looking at the overall situation.  She was no longer bathing, her sleep was constantly disturbed, she stopped reading, stopped watching TV, stopped going out of the house, and more.

So, wondering if it’s time that your loved one needs help?  It’s time to dig beneath the surface and punch through that wall of denial.  But don’t feel bad – you’re not alone!