Personal experiences of taking care of one’s own demented elderly mother, from the Front Page Sections, translated…
My mother is eighty-three, a couple of years ago, she’d started having alters in her emotions, and behaviors too, and, she’d become, chaotic in the mind too, my wife, with her background in social work, was sensitive to note, and suggested that I take my mother to get examined, and, the neurologist diagnosed my mother as having Alzheimer’s disease, medications were, prescribed to her. Later on, there was an accident my mother had, and she broke her legs, became immobilized, needed someone to take care of her living, after the surgery, she’d, slowly, recovered, but, the neurologist found her to be in the more advanced stages of dementia then, it was hard, for me to believe, that her mind was way worse than her physical wellbeing.
My mother didn’t want a foreign caretaker, refused to get placed in assisted living, and refused to live in the southern parts with me too, and being an only son, I can only, go to and from, I’d even filed for early retirement, and became her primary caretaker, I’d cleaned her house, cooked her meals, pushed her out on her wheelchair by the day. What’s troubling was I’d also needed to go back to the southern regions, to spend time with my wife and children too, and, as I’d come back to Taipei, seeing that my mother was okay, I’d, thanked the heavens.
What I’m glad was, I didn’t have that many relatives, who’d, chimed in on their opinions. And, my mother became more like a child, without a care in the world now, she could still hold onto the bowls, to eat on her own, she’d not needed the feeding tubes, nor the diapers either, compared to the caretakers of the paralyzed, I’d, fared, much, much better, I suppose?
If the government has the heart to push forth the long-term care programs, it’s, encouraging, but, the fully functioning families, still had its irreplaceable values. Sacrificing some of our own freedoms, or work’s paychecks, in exchange for an elderly parent’s dignified final years of life, perhaps, this can, give us, less to regret over later on.
And so, this, is the arrangement that this man’s made, to look after his own demented mother, and this, would be, the most ideal of cases, and because the elderly hadn’t progressed to the more severe levels of dementia, that, is why the man is having little to no problems, taking care of his own mother.
Life, the Obstacle Course 