NYTimes.com: Learning to Love My Father as His Mind Unraveled

This article is free for everyone to read:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/15/opinion/father-dementia-family.html?unlocked_article_code=1.0E0.jqBS.sBINCeGly_Zg&smid=em-share

Lots of things in the article will resonate with many of us.

The experience of living with my father’s dementia ranged from tragic to
tragicomic to vaudevillian, often within the span of a few minutes.

Perhaps it goes without saying, but dealing with a terminal illness often feels desperately sad — a steady march toward an inevitable demise. It’s easy to feel sorry for yourself, to focus on everything you’re losing. If you’re not careful, it will consume you. Finding a way to revel in the moments of joy or weirdness or humor, however small, was a matter of survival.

Dementia is a degenerative disease which means, essentially, that it works by eroding the brain. This is an oversimplification, but in general the atrophy begins with the inhibitions and control mechanisms. Then it moves deeper, into the hippocampus and frontal lobe, where it starts to eat away at memory: dates, faces, experiences, language. Some things inexplicably hold on longer than others. But eventually, the disease reaches the brainstem. It is at this stage that the body forgets how to perform even the most basic functions: how to chew, how to swallow, how to breathe. This process of erosion happens agonizingly slowly, and still, somehow, far too fast.