So I kinda feel uneasy about posting the video of Peggy. I don't want to scare anyone that might be headed down this path. Just this month, two of my dear friends in my neighborhood have had an alzheimer's diagnosis in their family. One thing I heard on the Larry King Show that hit home was that the founder of the Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health decided not have any waiting rooms in his facility. BECAUSE when his Dad was going for testing, he was in a waiting room with patients in different stages of the disease. His Dad saw his future, and well...that's why his son, now has no waiting rooms.
I remember looking at Sunrise here 2 years before I decided to bring Peggy out to the "reminiscence center for the memory impaired" That first time I went up there, I was frightened and knew right away, she was not there, yet.
So here we are today, 4 years later from that first visit. 6 years from moving her to Assisted Living, 8 years from Independent Living and her first diagnosis. The other thing is that not every patient is the same. Besides there a lots of stages to this thing.
The stages are fundamentally different, but you don't know that until you get there. It is all bearable. It is the unknowing that I have always struggled with. I always wanted to know how this exactly was going to play out. The truth is, you don't know until you get there. It's like you are in the present that has an empty past and no hope for a future. That sounds so dramatic and awful. So, I have taken the stages in years, and months, weeks, days and now minutes or even moments.
I remember looking at Sunrise here 2 years before I decided to bring Peggy out to the "reminiscence center for the memory impaired" That first time I went up there, I was frightened and knew right away, she was not there, yet.
So here we are today, 4 years later from that first visit. 6 years from moving her to Assisted Living, 8 years from Independent Living and her first diagnosis. The other thing is that not every patient is the same. Besides there a lots of stages to this thing.
The stages are fundamentally different, but you don't know that until you get there. It is all bearable. It is the unknowing that I have always struggled with. I always wanted to know how this exactly was going to play out. The truth is, you don't know until you get there. It's like you are in the present that has an empty past and no hope for a future. That sounds so dramatic and awful. So, I have taken the stages in years, and months, weeks, days and now minutes or even moments.
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