(231) Dementia

Over the week end I met my husband's former colleague's parents. Mr. and Mrs. Tan are retirees. While their daughter and family went for a package tour, they came to house sit to look after the family pet dog. In fact I blogged about their remarkable grand daughter in my no 2 post many months ago.

Mr. Tan is a healthy and hardy seventy-six year old. He was a former sportsman and a retired military personnel. Mrs Tan was diagnosed with dementia at age seventy two. By the time I met her, she was in the final stage. She no longer knows her own name. Neither could she write any number or letters. It was fortunate that she has a good pension as she used to hold a high post in the government. Her husband is her sole care-giver. She is totally dependent on him day and night. A year back, her children paid and gotten a full-time foreign maid to help care for her. She was suspicious of another woman staying in her domain and was very jealous of the time and attention her husband spent in training the maid. Day and night she fought to send the maid away. In the end, they took the maid to another family just to restore peace.

It is not easy to care for a fully grown adult with the mental capacity of a three year old. Once Mrs Tan wander off in a shopping centre and was lost for more than five hours. When the police located her, she was miles away in another commercial centre trying to open the car doors of every single car parked along the street. In addition to that, she was petrified with hands involuntarily shaking and she had soiled herself. Her husband had made sure she wore a stainless steel wrist band with his hand phone number engraved on it. Despite the fact that she was scared, she did not know how to ask for help. Mrs Tan is physically fit and may have the normal life span up to the average expectation of eighty odd years. As a result of the stress of caring for her, Mr Tan had accepted that he might lose six to eight years of his own life expectancy.

Here is the lives of a happily married couple adversely affected by disease. As in the marriage vow of  dwelling with each other through sickness and health, this is the flip side of the coin. Mr. Tan has passed the test with flying colours. He still takes his wife overseas twice a year because dementia did not take away her enjoyment in sight-seeing and trying new food. Mrs Tan is indeed a very blessed woman.

There is no cure once dementia sets in. One can only monitor, treat the symptoms and delay the process of worsening. Not much is proven about the cause of dementia. We are almost dealing with a black box.