So I was reading about dementia and how to prevent it. In case you’re wondering why it’s because my mother and my uncle, (her brother) both had dementia. They both died of dementia and other diseases.
When you live through this then you realize how devastating it can be to a family. When my mother had issues she just drifted off to older times. It was strange at the time and we had no idea what it really was. We wrote it off as getting old. We didn’t think anything of it. Then, as she got older, she got more and more confused and then totally lost touch with reality.
OK, this was sad, very sad. She was in and out of reality.
To make matters worse, my dad took care of her at the time and kept it from us. While this doesn’t sound like a big deal, it became a big deal when my dad hit 93 and had heart issues. Two years later he died. Then suddenly, we had to deal with mom’s issue right away.
To pile on top, mom got very depressed. This made everything worse.
We had to put her in a home. Don’t get me wrong, we tried to take care of her on our own. My sisters took the weekday shifts, taking turns day and night and I came up on Friday nights to do the weekend shift. From Friday to Sunday night. It was so demanding that we realized after a few months we could not do it.
We tried some live-in nurses, but that didn’t work out well either.
Eventually, we had to put her in a home. This was a tough decision because she didn’t want to leave her home. We had no choice so we had her put in a home. She seemed to adapt well, but I know she didn’t want to be there.
The place did a good job. My only complaint was the doctors there put her on so many sedatives that she became a zombie. This was not good in our opinion. I think they did it because it made her easier to manage. We had them cut back on the sedatives but then they would fall a lot.
Eventually she was wheelchair bound and eventually wound up in the hospital for her falls.
Then she had a stroke.
Then she got worse and died.
I think the sedatives were given to her to prevent her from hurting herself.
She died at 91, but was only a month shy of her 92nd birthday. Pretty amazing to me!!
I am telling you this story so that you think about what you can do to prevent dementia. I am worried about this and think about the problems she had.
I didn’t get tested for the gene yet, but I intend to.
Until then, I have read several books on the topic. I also have some papers to look at for you. One, https://www.everydayhealth.com/dementia/risk-factors-identified-for-early-onset-dementia/ which has several notes about the top 15 risks found in the UK, shows us that the results are all over the place.
Let me put some notes around my family to show you which ones apply to them.
- Lower formal education – my mother had a high school education, but not much more. Her mother died when she was very young, around 7 or so. So my mom raised her sisters with her dad.
- Lower socioeconomic status – my mom was from a very poor family, but they always managed to eat. When she married my dad, a farmer, they also had little money but plenty of food.
- Two copies of the APOE4 gene – Who knows, this I am not sure about, but I have to get tested so I know.
- Alcohol use disorder – My mother drank very little if any alcohol. She was not a fan.
- Social isolation – my mother lived on the farm, but she had many neighbors and friends, so I didn’t think this applied to her.
- Vitamin D deficiency – how would anyone know if they have a vitamin D deficiency without some tests? I have no idea.
- High C-reactive protein levels – Again, who knows?
- Lower handgrip strength – I do know when my mother got older, her grip got worse and worse. We had no idea it meant anything other than she was old.
- No alcohol use – this was my mother, someone who rarely if ever touched alcohol.
- Hearing impairment – Listen, in my family everyone’s hearing has gotten worse as they’ve gotten older. I thought it happened to everyone.
- Diabetes – my mother had diabetes, not severe, but she did have it and have it treated.
- Heart disease – my dad had heart disease but not dementia. My mom had a very strong heart so this doesn’t apply.
- Depression – my mom was always a little depressed and when my dad died she fell into a deep depression, so this one applies.
- Orthostatic hypotension (when blood pressure drops after standing up after sitting or lying down) – OK, my mom, like me, always got light headed when she got up too fast. She was not diagnosed with this, but I remember this was a problem she had.
- Stroke – in her later years, mom had a stroke. I don’t know of any before she had dementia.
The funny thing about this is that I never thought we were different, or poor. I guess when you grow up you think that’s how life is. It’s funny when you read something like this you begin to realize how bad you had it. I never felt that way growing up. I accepted having no money, that’s just how it was. So what?
Now, people might look down on that or let me know how pathetic they think we are. I never thought that about myself or my family. We did OK and had a great life.
However, my dad and mom wanted us kids to do better than they did. I feel we did. We all got better jobs and moved up the social ladder. I feel lucky my dad drove us to do that. So why would I bring that up? Because I just read about a guy in the auto plant that said he was a third generation auto worker. His dad and grandfather all worked on the assembly line like him. To be clear, my dad wanted all of us to do better. His dad did not. His dad wanted his kid to have the same job he had. Who does that to their kid?
I feel lucky that all of my kids have college degrees and much better jobs that I do, with more opportunity. Do you know why? I wanted all of them to do better than me or my wife. I wanted all of them to be more successful, make more money, and get ahead. I didn’t want them to live a life of hard work and scraping by luke I did. That’s what we should want for our kids in my opinion. I want them to do better, not doing what I am doing but making their own way in life. That was very important to me. Why live my life? I lived it and I wanted to do better.
Listen, if you have an awesome business where your kid can grow it and make a ton of money, GOD bless, hand it off to them. If they can do something great with it and you feel like you’re giving them an opportunity of a lifetime, then do it. Unfortunately where and how I was raised, I didn’t have that. I could not give that to my kids. I wish I could have, but I was not an owner. If you are, they by all means, give it to your kids!
For the rest of us, do you really want your kids to remain the same? Don’t we all want our kids to do better? I know I did.
In this story I wanted you to realize our healthy matters. Our brain and the way we hand off our legacy to our children. We can do that by simply planning the best we can throughout our lives, not just at the end.
Prepare your kids from the time they are young, not after you retire. Plan ahead for your health and well-being. Do what you can with what you got when you can.
You may not think this matters, but do it before it’s too late. It may not be your body that gives out, but your brain.
Be healthy and plan wisely.