Just a week after mother’s car crash and subsequent dementia crisis, she has made a remarkable rebound. The symptoms of dementia that I thought were permanent and severe have dissipated. Every day, she regained her cognitive ability and now seems to have recovered to where she was before the accident.
It must have been temporary. My sister and I have some guesses that a prolonged bought with the flu, dehydration and crashing her car all led to some type of brain trauma that presented as dementia to us.
Whew. What a relief for all of us.
Except.
Except for the signs I’ve observed over the past few years. The withdrawal from society. The disinterest in challenging activities. Her inability (or unwillingness) to perform basic activities that she used to do.
Those symptoms were all there before her crisis. They are not going to disappear.
On a podcast about caring for his elderly mother who was experiencing a long, slow decline in health, one man said it was years of ups and downs. He said his mother would have health incidents (falls, accidents, crises) and then would recover, but never to the level she was before the incident. He said it was one step forward and two steps back with a series of incidents until eventually she died.
Barring her fantasy of dying peacefully in her sleep, that’s the likely future for my mother.
So while we’re all thrilled with her rebound from the car accident, it’s totally unrealistic to think things are fine now.