A different way to view Alzheimer’s

I wish to provide a different story about living with a person with early onset dementia. My mother was diagnosed as having Alzheimer’s in her early 50s. She is now in her mid 70s. Like Frances Barber, my mother lived life to the full. She was an avid gardener, a cyclist, a hands-on mother and grandmother to my nephews and nieces, and a nurse. Today she is fully dependent. She cannot feed, toilet or change herself. She doesn’t know who I am.

In fact I am many persons to her. When she is sad I am her mother who she seeks comfort from. At other times when she is chatty I am a girlfriend, sometimes I’m her niece. At the end of the day, we love her through all her changes and there are many.

Mum can’t make choices, so we have made the choice to give her our time while she is still with us. Would she have supported assisted euthanasia, I don’t know. I doubt it. I had my children many years after Mum began showing signs of Alzheimer’s. So they only know the Nana with Alzheimer’s. And they accept her the way she is.

I recall wanting God to heal my mother for so long and then realised she was perfect the way she is. I would ask that instead of a law change, maybe we need to consider changing the way we view Alzheimer’s and dementia. We must not fear it, as David Barber would suggest, but learn to embrace and support those who are experiencing the dementing process.

Tiana Wharawhara, Kerikeri.