In another post (http://www.alzheimers.org.uk/talkingpoint/discuss/showthread.php?t=2244) Brucie wrote:
That really struck a chord with me. To others who haven't experienced dementia, they would probably think that the incontinence or the loss of ability to eat would be the things we state as the really BIG shock events, but for me too, I guess by the time it got to stage I was beginning to become numb (not completely, but at some level yes) to the shocks this disease delivers. For me the BIG shock I remember happened when preparing for my brother's wedding. Dad stood there looking in the mirror, his hands to his tie, and he just didn't know what to do.
It begins like a little tapping at your foundations, something that is a little unsettling, makes you feel uncomfortable and a little ill at ease and then the tapping gets louder, becomes more violent, starts to shake your foundations. Then you begin to rattle and tremble and are shaken to your very core as the thunder rolls in. From this point on, its just one bomb blast after the next. KABOOM, KABANG, KAPOW, shrapnel is flying everywhere and you don't know if you are going to survive, you are out on the edge, teetering, and you don't know if you are going to be able to hold on much longer...but you do, you just keep hanging there while the blows continue to fall, and hell rains down upon you. You can no longer see for all the muck and grime in the air, it even makes breathing a chore. But time ticks on, and you start to notice that you are still there, everything is in ruins around you, but you are still there, there's debri everywhere and everything is covered in dust and is grey, but although the bombs keep falling you no longer hear them so loudly, everything is muffled, perhaps they sent you deaf? You can still feel the shaking at your foundations, but they seem far away and distant. You peer out from the dust and you can see a sliver of sunlight, its the faintest hint of light, but you focus on it, it doesn't get any bigger, but neither does it go away and in your dreamy daze you just keep looking at it, knowing that that is what you must do, to get through this.
One day the sun will shine again, the dust will settle and you will see the ruins around you, mangled and broken. The bombs will have stopped falling and you'll dare to take a step again, breathe again. The world will be silent, but you will have cried all your tears for it long ago. On that day you will look up and see how the world can begin again and on that spot where that sliver of sunlight shone all that time, the light that got you through, there will be a beautiful forget me not, a splash of colour in this grey world growing there and it will give you the hope to begin again.....
I still think that, out of everything that has happened to Jan, my biggest shock was the realisation that she couldn't write her own name, when that stage came. That was when I knew we were in this thing for real, and I was scared witless, unable to discuss it with the one person I could always talk with about anything - Jan.
That really struck a chord with me. To others who haven't experienced dementia, they would probably think that the incontinence or the loss of ability to eat would be the things we state as the really BIG shock events, but for me too, I guess by the time it got to stage I was beginning to become numb (not completely, but at some level yes) to the shocks this disease delivers. For me the BIG shock I remember happened when preparing for my brother's wedding. Dad stood there looking in the mirror, his hands to his tie, and he just didn't know what to do.
It begins like a little tapping at your foundations, something that is a little unsettling, makes you feel uncomfortable and a little ill at ease and then the tapping gets louder, becomes more violent, starts to shake your foundations. Then you begin to rattle and tremble and are shaken to your very core as the thunder rolls in. From this point on, its just one bomb blast after the next. KABOOM, KABANG, KAPOW, shrapnel is flying everywhere and you don't know if you are going to survive, you are out on the edge, teetering, and you don't know if you are going to be able to hold on much longer...but you do, you just keep hanging there while the blows continue to fall, and hell rains down upon you. You can no longer see for all the muck and grime in the air, it even makes breathing a chore. But time ticks on, and you start to notice that you are still there, everything is in ruins around you, but you are still there, there's debri everywhere and everything is covered in dust and is grey, but although the bombs keep falling you no longer hear them so loudly, everything is muffled, perhaps they sent you deaf? You can still feel the shaking at your foundations, but they seem far away and distant. You peer out from the dust and you can see a sliver of sunlight, its the faintest hint of light, but you focus on it, it doesn't get any bigger, but neither does it go away and in your dreamy daze you just keep looking at it, knowing that that is what you must do, to get through this.
One day the sun will shine again, the dust will settle and you will see the ruins around you, mangled and broken. The bombs will have stopped falling and you'll dare to take a step again, breathe again. The world will be silent, but you will have cried all your tears for it long ago. On that day you will look up and see how the world can begin again and on that spot where that sliver of sunlight shone all that time, the light that got you through, there will be a beautiful forget me not, a splash of colour in this grey world growing there and it will give you the hope to begin again.....
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