We joke about it because joking makes us feel a little less worried. We give our lapses in memory cute little terms like "senior moment" or we say things like, "I finally got it all together but I forgot where I put it." We find humor in what scares us sometimes, or in what puts us all on par with one another as imperfect beings who occasionally forget things. In my field of work, I hear jokes like this every day, but I also witness the devastation a blighted mind can create in the world of a person, a family, a community. Let me tell you, it's nothing to laugh about.
Often people with dementia posture with humor when they fear others notice they might not be remembering things well. Some laugh too much, some crack little jokes that might or might not make sense to us. Others try to turn the tables on us and with their laughter, attempt to make the snafu seem as though it's ours. People who work with dementia patients, either as nurses, nursing assistants, therapists or activity directors also turn to humor. At times, laughing is the only way we keep from crying. Coping with humor often makes the tougher things in life more palatable but using humor in the wrong ways can cause us to not take diseases that cause memory loss as seriously as we should.
What if we lived in a world where our memory lapses weren't joked away?
Every day I watch dementia take more and more away from people who were once intelligent, lively, loving, trusting and confident. I see it destroy decades-long relationships as spouses trade in their marriage roles for caregiver and patient roles. That's not to say that caregiver and spouse are mutually exclusive, but with Alzheimer's or any other dementia, a husband, in the end, isn't caring for the same wife he married, nor a wife caring for the same husband. They watch that person slowly die away as their brains become ravaged by a disease that takes the very essence of who they once were: Their memories and life-lessons.
Use this link to donate to The Alzheimer's Association today.
By the later stages, a person with dementia might not recognize a spouse to whom she's been married for thirty years or more. A husband might not remember the home he built for his family. A mom might call her daughter "Mother" or a father might call a daughter by his wife's name. The caregiver's life is often chaotic, stressful, depressing and anxiety ridden. Caregivers are faced with financial struggle as resources get stretched thin and their loved ones require more and more care. Eventually, the person with dementia can no longer be left alone for any amount of time. Finding affordable paid caregivers is a tremendous hurdle for most families and our current health system offers little to nothing in the way of resources for these folks. Watching someone you love disappear behind a disease is not funny. Watching them become strangers to you, as you become a stranger to them, no laughing matter.
It's time we stop joking about dementia and get serious. We need to stop accepting dementia as a natural part of aging; it isn't. We need better resources to help the families who are in the trenches now and more education to aid in early diagnosis and intervention. We need to live healthier lives and do the things we know can decrease our chances of having Alzheimer's as we age. We need to understand that Alzheimer's and some other types of dementia are not merely diseases of age at all. People as young as 30 have been diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease.
Do you know the 10 Early Signs and Symptoms of Alzheimer's?
If you're looking for a charity this Christmas, I encourage you to donate to the Alzheimer's Association. The Alzheimer's Association provides education, support and tangible resources to help people with Alzheimer's as well as their caregivers. They fund research into prevention as well as finding a cure so that future generations can live without the fear of forgetting the people they love.
