This disease changed the trajectory of her life...

In 2016, my grandma was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

Before the diagnosis, the whole family always believed that grandma forgot to lock the door when she went out to buy groceries, did not flush the toilet after using it, burned the pot when cooking...all because "she is old and can't remember things, it's normal."

Until one day, my grandma went missing. The whole family searched for her desperately: supermarkets, squares, parks... every possible place was not left out. After 5 hours, they finally found her on the way back to her hometown village.

After going to the hospital for examination, it was confirmed that the disease was already moderate to severe.

Alzheimer's disease

Data from the international medical journal The Lancet Public Health shows that there are approximately 9.83 million Alzheimer's patients in China.

Cases like my grandma's were diagnosed as moderate to severe, accounting for 67%, and the best early intervention stage has been missed.

Alzheimer's disease is a degenerative disease of the nervous system. In the early stages, it often manifests as memory impairment and cognitive impairment, such as frequent forgetfulness, lack of understanding of numbers, and inability to remember the location of home...

When the elderly in your family show these symptoms, be sure to go to the hospital for examination as soon as possible.

Early diagnosis, early intervention and early treatment are very important for delaying the progression of the disease.

After grandma was diagnosed, grandpa, who was still in relatively good health, took on the responsibility of taking care of her, and the two of them were inseparable every day.

The longer the illness lasted, the more my grandma lost not only her memory and cognition, but her spiritual world also began to become desolate. She gave up her hobbies from her youth, such as painting and listening to music, but the idleness made her anxious.

She began to like going out and liked the repetitive, monotonous feeling of being "on the road".

This is also the primary reason that drives countless families of Alzheimer's patients crazy: no matter what the weather is, whether it is day or night, as long as they are awake, they will go out by themselves and often get lost.

Helpless, grandpa could only accompany him.

The two of them often walked out of the house in the early morning when the sky was just beginning to brighten; sometimes they took the bus to travel around the county town, from the starting point to the end point; but more often, they took the bus to their hometown village, to visit familiar relatives, and sat for ten minutes or half an hour, and then took the bus back home.

When we asked grandpa if he was tired of taking care of grandma, he always smiled and said no, as he just happened to like taking walks.

In fact, he just didn't want to burden his children.

During that time, grandma got lost several times when grandpa was going to the toilet, sleeping, or in the middle of the night.

Fortunately, the family members had learned from experience and were able to find her by following the route back to the village.

In my impression, grandma had the final say in the family, but she was not very close to us grandchildren.

When I was a child, my grandmother hit the back of my hand with a feather duster until it became red and swollen because I stole a piece of biscuit.

When she was first diagnosed, her family put a tracking watch on her. She resisted and hated the feeling of being "monitored" and "tracked". She said angrily: "I have been strong all my life, but now that I am old, you still treat me like a child." Therefore, the tracking watch always appears in every corner of the house.

Slowly, she began to lose her ability to "resist". From being bossy in the past, she now sat with her head down in silence, no longer pulling down her watch or saying a word.

Only when grandpa "complained" to us would she pick up her little walking stick and hit grandpa's legs angrily, signaling him to stop talking; and when she was young, she could make grandpa shut up with just a look.

Later, grandma started to not recognize us and looked at us as if we were strangers. She even often called her old man "Dad", and after being corrected, she would still call out "Dad" when she opened her mouth.

The disease slowly leveled out her personality, hobbies, energy, language, and contact with her family, turning her into a completely different person.

Oscar-nominated animation "Forget-Me-Not": In the eyes of Louis, an old man suffering from Alzheimer's disease, the faces of his relatives have become distorted and abstract.

In the documentary "Human World: The Past Can Only Be Recalled", Fu Gengsheng, who suffers from vascular cognitive impairment (similar to the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease), often walks back and forth and shouts in the middle of the night, so he has to be tied to the bed at night.

Tied to the bed, still looking for relatives

This situation is common in many nursing homes or hospitals.

When the elderly’s social functions are forcibly cut off, they will quickly lose their ability to express themselves and move under the rapid attack of the disease. In some cases, it may take less than a year for them to go from being able to walk to being completely bedridden.

In comparison, grandma is lucky. With grandpa by her side, she can go wherever she wants.

But unfortunately, due to his reduced mobility, he fell down the stairs and broke his hip.

This fall completely changed her fate.

The average life expectancy of Alzheimer's patients is 5-10 years, and if they are well cared for, they can live for more than ten years.

It was only half a year from the time my grandma fell to the time she passed away.

After staying in the hospital for nearly a month, my grandma returned home. She was in a coma most of the day and had lost the ability to eat and defecate. Everything happened in a small space like a bed. Her life could only be maintained by the mushy food injected into the gastric tube with a syringe.

Only when she was occasionally lucid would she try her best to move her eyeballs, tears welling up in the corners of her eyes, and she would open and close her mouth, but could only utter some "ba" and "ah" syllables.

Not long after, he fell into a deep sleep again.

The family members guessed that maybe grandma was calling "Dad".

Grandma was not conscious until half a month before she took her last breath.

"Compared to lying awake and disabled in bed, enduring physical and mental torture, grandma has been sleeping all the time. Maybe she will dream that she has returned to her childhood home, where there is a father who loves her."

This is probably the self-deceptive consolation of relatives.

My grandmother was suffering from Alzheimer's disease. She was very unfortunate. Her later years, which could have been healthy and long, ended abruptly in less than 3 years.

But compared to most Alzheimer's patients, she is lucky: with the company and care of her grandfather, she is free; she has been bedridden for half a year, in a coma for a long time, incontinent, with a gastric tube inserted, unable to move... she cannot feel any of it, so she should not be in pain.