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Learning the logic of dementia

Stevie was a wonderful woman that I cared for on the Oregon coast. She was a petite, elf-like woman in her 80s. She lively, sweet, funny and she just loved all of her pets. And there were a lot: 3 indoor dogs, 3 indoor cats, and 5 outdoor cats that slept in the garage.

He spent much of his day refilling all those pet bowls with food. She would trot from house to garage devoutly filling those bowls. His pets were among the fattest in the neighborhood, needless to say.

The only cloud on Stevie’s horizon was her daughter. Her daughter lived in the cabin next door. She was an impulsive, anxious and perfectionist woman who had no mercy for her mother with dementia. The irony of all this was that what her daughter now reflected who Stevie had once been. Stevie used to be a perfectionist nurse.

Now Stevie had grown into a happy, relaxed woman who enjoyed her pets. Her daughter was now her mother’s caretaker, filled with anguish and terror and almost unable to even look at her mother with madness. That was too bad because she might have been able to revel in Stevie’s innocent childish heart and the pleasure of the everyday.

Instead, she herself was now the stern mother of her childish father. I often found myself consoling Stevie over her daughter’s infractions of the rules.

Once, when the cold and rainy Oregon winter began, Stevie’s daughter bought her a very nice fancy electric blanket to keep her warm. She put her mother’s bed in and turned it on for the night.

I got there the next morning, just in time to see Stevie’s daughter come out of the house. I walked in Stevie was standing in the kitchen with her head down.

“What’s up Stevie?” I whispered, wrapping my arm around her shoulder. So she told me.

It had been a cold, rainy night, but Stevie had been warm and cozy with her electric blanket. However, she couldn’t stop worrying about her pets. were they cold? Was the cold getting to them?

Finally, she got up. She took her electric blanket into the kitchen, found the biggest pair of scissors she could find, and proceeded to cut it into eleven large squares. She tucked one of those squares under every cat and every dog, including the garage cats.

Satisfied that she had properly cared for all of her beloved little retirees, she went back to her own bed, glad that she got to share her blanket with all of them.

It was the next morning before her daughter found out what Stevie had done with the expensive electric blanket and started yelling at her.

Of course, I could see your daughter’s point. The treasure in all of that for me, though, was that it was a beautiful example of madness logic, a carefully thought out plan with big holes of madness. I have to admit that I laughed, a lot, as I hugged Stevie. But I also found my eyes welling with tears because she touched me so much how she had fought so hard to share her own comfort with her beloved and overfed little retirees.

He had a heart full of sacred and enduring love, in partnership with a brain blocked by

And that’s the logic of dementia for you.

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