The long goodbye

 

It must have been extremely difficult and back-breaking. Raising five kids on a school teacher’s salary. Plus, the guests at our house would very often go up to 20 or more. Most of the way, there was no household help. Just the utensils to be washed and the cooking would be something. My Mom bore it all stoically. And, managed to be cheerful. Basically, she is as non-complaining as one can get. 

In her old age, I have wanted to make her as comfortable as possible and shifted to a new house primarily because there is a servant quarter there. Six months into the stay there, she complained of severe stomach disorder. She was not able to describe the symptoms accurately but looked like, the chief complaint was major gastric discomfort. The distress was so acute that she had to be admitted at Apollo, Kolkata. A whole battery of tests didn’t throw up anything significant. With the medications, when the symptoms eased, she was discharged. After returning home, again, the distress rebounded. Various doctors, gastro-enterologist, diabetologist, internal medicine specialist and so on were at their wit’s end. When I asked if any further investigation can be done, the doctors said everything had been tested for; the only thing left was a whole body PET-CT scan but that was not indicated. On my own, I got that too done and the results were normal. 

During all these rounds of doctors and hospitals, one doctor suggested gently that since organically nothing is being found, should I be thinking of a psychiatric consult? Since, as I mentioned earlier, she is very far from being the complaining kind, I didn’t put much store by that and even the doctor was not very convinced about the need. 

Slowly, she took to bed almost the whole day. She stopped all activities, even her Puja in the morning and evening. After some time, she almost stopped eating because of lack of appetite. In front of my eyes, she kept shrinking and withering away, with severe weight loss. After about six months from the onset of the symptoms I had exhausted all other possible doctors and, in desperation, consulted a psychiatrist. After hearing the details and checking the voluminous medical records, he was confident that it was a case of what is called Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). I didn’t share his confidence but tried out the medication (anti-depressant and anti-anxiety) that he prescribed. Lo and behold, the situation improved dramatically. By the second consult, the psychiatrist asked me stop all the medicines prescribed by gastro-enterology. 

Mom is back to her morning walks, pujas, meals, cooking and so on. 

I had read about mental health but never realised that it could have such severe physical manifestations. I am grateful to the psychiatrist’s confidence – probably that stemmed from the fact that his own father is also suffering from MDD. 

Mom has also been diagnosed with early dementia and that is scary. After reading about it, what I gather about dementia is, it is a shrinking of the brain or its capacity. It starts with forgetting things (my Mom’s current stage). If the disease progresses, the patient changes physically, forgets his near and dear ones. The patient can eventually become bedridden and not be able to eat or drink or talk. However, there is a chance that the disease doesn’t progress and I am hoping for that. 

Meanwhile, many things have needed to be recalibrated. For example, I see to it that Mom is never alone. Even when I have to travel, I ask for one of my siblings to come and stand guard or first travel with her to the sibling’s place and keep her there for the duration. When she goes for her walk, I accompany her and after bringing her back, go for my own walk and exercises. I am having to change the lock on the house door so that she can’t open it on her own and wander away. I have locked away all medicines in the house and certain eatables so that she doesn't accidentally overdose/overconsume. I came across a set of very good advice on how to behave around a dementia patient and am reproducing it here:

Dementia is called “the long goodbye.” I am hoping that goodbye never comes or even if it does, it is far away in the future. Meanwhile, I take each day as an adventure anew …