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Hernando Today

Dealing With Severe Trauma

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 29, 2009

During the eight year span I've been safekeeping my father while he fights his way through Alzheimer's, we experienced what could be the worst excursion of our campaign.

Dad was admitted into a local hospital. The advice I'm going to give you is this: Tell the person in the hospital admittance office to record that the patient is memory-impaired.

You need to tell the nurses, tell "everybody," even the janitor, I don't care.

You have to get it through their heads this person has no short-term memory and demand that it's emblazoned on the face of their chart in red.

Jerking him out of his routine and familiar environment had cracked his stable foundation. His confusion was overwhelming, very near delusional.

Dad kept insisting he owned the building and some lady stole all the books he'd been pricing.

Stunned, I walked into his room to find a nurse handing him a clipboard asking a memory-impaired 85-year-old man to fill-out his medical and prescription history.

Disregarding her insistence, Dad started informing her he'd have her thrown throw off his property and arrested if she didn't bring back the books. By the second day, his roommate pleaded to be moved to another room. I don't know what took him so long.

The lesson here is: My father is unable to answer for himself. Somebody needs to be with him around the clock. If you ask him the same question a couple of minutes apart, you'll get two different answers, maybe three.

Someone who is memory-impaired shouldn't be left alone in a situation like that. You're probably thinking, "There's a nursing staff around the clock."

Taking shifts, my sister and I are always with him when he is hospitalized. Out of the 24 nurses he dealt with, only two of them handled him without any problems.

Unfortunately, returning the next day these were assigned to a different part of the wing.

One overriding dilemma I have is there are many so-called medical professionals who actually believe there's nothing to be learned from either the caregiver or patient.

This is far from the truth. I've been watching my father battle his way through this morbidity since day one - which adds up to more hours than it takes to get a medical degree.

Let's substantiate: Once in the hospital room, he suddenly noticed tubes and needles sticking out of his arm. Not realizing where he was, he ripped the I.V. out.

I suggested that if they simply took a marker and actually wrote on his arm, "Do Not Remove," that might solve the problem. His excuse for them was, "Nobody gave me any instructions."

His nurses ignored me as if I were a leper. Curiously, after his second removal of tubes and needles, I noticed a bright pink post-note taped to his arm with instructions. Problem solved.

Confusion is so strong when he's out of his element that little problems become colossal. I asked his doctor, "Why don't they have a certain color wristband for patients that are memory-impaired?" He looked at me and said, "That's a good idea. I'll bring it up at the next meeting." Whether it ever happened, I wouldn't hold my breath, but it makes sense to me.

A quick trip down to X-ray requires him to see a transporter, a radiologist and who knows how many other new faces. My guess is that none of them are informed he's memory-impaired. By the time he's back upstairs he's just dealt with several strangers who asked him a 100 questions.

Doctors and nurses have medical training on what the disease is, but how many hours do you think they have actually spent with an Alzheimer's patient? I respect their dedication to healing the ill, but they need to respect the opinions of the caregiver, patient and family. Heaven forbid the medical staff might learn something from a layman's experience. After all, we're the ones who know what developments and changes the sufferer goes through. The professionals' visit lasts 15 minutes, ours 24/7.

Prior to release from the hospital, I asked his doctor to have home-care scheduled rather than send him to rehabilitation in a nursing home. The care he needed wasn't drastic enough to put him through another set of unfamiliar circumstances. "Indeed, every time we move him around like this I feel we lose another piece of him." His doctor agreed.

Home-care has its drawbacks, too. They rarely send the same nurse twice and never the same time of day. Trying to get him back into his routine is almost impossible. Two days passed before he realized he was home and it took our cat for that to happen, but that's another story.

Then they sent out this nurse who just turned my stomach. One of the worse things you can do while caring for an Alzheimer's patient is treat him like an infant. This disease has enough depressing seasons. There's no reason to fuel the fire. An 85 year old retired businessman is what he is and that's the way he deserves to be treated. No baby talk. No childish remarks. One afflicted might only remember being humiliated for a few minutes, but that's too long.

Educate yourself not to chisel away at their humanity. There's enough depression involved with this devastating disease to go around for everybody. The longer they have their dignity the more time you'll have with your friend.

Even during a doctor's visit my dad remarked how the doctor said nothing to him and spoke directly to me. This works both ways. Don't talk to the doctor as if the patient isn't in the room. One problem lies with the doctor being too busy to talk outside the examination room. Two suggestions: Have the doctor call you later that day at his convenience or try to have someone accompany you on the visit. That way they can sit with him in the lobby while you have a conversation with the physician. Trust me; you don't want to leave him sitting alone in the waiting room.

This last hospital stay put a sour taste in my mouth worse than the cod liver oil my mother used to spoon down us. She even fed it to our dog; it was supposed to make her fur shiny. I bet you if that dog was still alive today it would be as bald as I.

So many health professionals don't listen to the caregivers or patients. They should all try this: Imagine themselves in caregiver's shoes for just one day.

Gary Joseph Le Blanc is the primary caregiver of his father who has been stricken with Alzheimer's disease for more than 8 years. He can be written c/o Hernando Today at 15299 Cortez Blvd., Brooksville, FL 34613 or e-mailed at us41books@bellsouth.net.

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