When I worked in an elderly home as a trainee psychologist (in my 5th year of psychology), there was this 91 years old lady I really liked. She had a kind of Dementia that’s a bit like Alzheimer, but not exactly (just picture Alzheimer’s, it will be perfectly fine).
I had learned several years before, in Neuropsychology, that in dementias, you don’t lose ALL of your memory. Several types of them get impaired, but some still work perfectly fine. Like your emotions. Or conditioning (you know, associations your body learns automatically, like Pavlov’s work with dogs). So, I knew how that theoretically worked, but I had not experienced it.
So this lady was really nice, saying hello and asking for my name every time our eyes met, even if we were actually already in a conversation. Full start over, like Dory from Finding Nemo, quite impressive. I would politely redo the same conversation of 30 secondes with her twenty times in a row, trying to get her to a bit of a different point every time, so I could learn more about her.
Sometimes, she was clearly driven by a negative emotion, and usually that’s when she was disoriented. Looking for a purse or something, saying “I have to go feed the veals” when she seemed stressed out, things like that. I would do as I learned : neither entering nor denying the “delirium”, but following on her emotion so that she would feel better.
“Who would take good care of the veals while you are here ?
- My eldest son, [Name] !”
(That’s the son she actually left in charge of her farm)
“Oh, that’s a very good thing, because I think he is the one taking care of the veals right now, so you can stay with me and chat a little bit if you want.”
As days went by, she could still not know my first name, even if we had the same one. She would feel just as surprised to “discover” this funny information, and often lead to the same questions or stories afterwards. She asked me who I was, what I was doing here, and so on. But she remembered me in a way : in her attitude, from day to day, she was getting warmer and closer. After a few weeks, when she saw me, she would grab my name and have a happy smile, then look a little confused about it and ask me who I was.
After one month, she was still asking me who I was and what my name was. She would still answer my answers with the same sentences. But she was also adding new stories. More private stories, things she would not have told a stranger. How her favorite daughter had died, the one that was nice to her. How her husband was a terrible man and she cried from relief when he died. She felt confident in me even, had you asked her, we were meeting for the first time.
After six weeks, when she was (still) asking me my name, she was wondering if I was one of her daughters. I did not look like them at all, but her emotions were telling her that we were close, so she was trying to put her finger on it.
After two months, my internship was coming to an end. I was preparing all the residents for my leave, but I did not know how to act with her. Should I tell her I was leaving in a few days ? How would she feel ? If she felt sad, would it be cruel because she would have forgotten the next day ?
My supervisor psychologist, who was the one working there in the first place, “pshhed” me, saying it was dumb because “she has no memory, duh, don’t even tell her you’re going to leave”, she’s not going to remember anyway. I looked at the other trainee psychologist, and we decided she was a dick and I should prepare the lady for my leave lol. She would tell me a nice, polite “Oh, that’s too bad, you are very nice”, then look at something, go another “reset loop”, and say hello.
So on the day I left, I went to see her in her bedroom to tell her I was leaving. I entered the room, she asked me who I was, and what my name was. She was pleasantly surprised we had the same first name, and told me her usual story. We had a small chat, she seemed quite well, and I kindly told her that it was my last day and that I was going to leave. She cried. She told me :
“I’m sad because I’ll miss you but I won’t even remember your name when I think about you.” I was baffled. I had seen her have insight on her dementia only once, the rest of the time she was too disoriented to know about it. She said :
“I”m sad because I’ll miss you and then I’ll forget I miss you, and you’ll be just like my daughter.” That got me on the verge of tears. First of all it was a huge honor, and also no university course had prepared me for something like this. Would I have read this after my lessons, I would have thought it was a false story, and that her dementia would not allow her to have such an insight, even for a few minutes (which is dumb). She grasped my hand. She was actually the saddest one to see my leave lol
After I left, the other trainee psychologist told me she was looking a bit more sad than usual, and seemed to be asking for someone but not placing a name. Then she got better, and went back to her usual stories :)
You never lose your humanity. I know losing your memory feels extremely scary because your identity feels tied to it, but you will still have you, and you will still have your emotions :)
