Help My Wife To Safety On Her Journey Of Dementia

Hi, my name is Valerie. My wife has recently been diagnosed with severe dementia with psychotic disturbance. My fingers retreat as I type the words. I need help to keep her safe. My ability to care give to provide safety and warmth is no longer enough as her clarity of thought, understanding of past and present, imagination, dreams, memories, shape shift and alter from day to day and sometimes hour to hour.

Lay It Bare V. After keeping the home fires burning for 31 years, daily life is changing faster than we can understand and endure. Moments spin and jump from peace, quiet, laughter, to deep layered confusion, travel in between decades, family, friends. If you know my wife A, she is my best friend, my darling love. To share our very private truth today is a heartbreaking choice but with faith in the power of love and compassion I believe it will be a lifesaving choice for both of us.

HOPE and BLESSINGS

At my core I hope for her peace, joy, rest, love, laughter, and everything she dreams and believes. I am grateful for the memories we both treasure and are creating. For me I hope for a good night's sleep, a time without the constant terror of listening so close every minute of the day and night, knowing a wandering happens so fast in 5 minutes or less she is gone, and I can't find her.

I am grateful for the 24/7 Alzheimer's Association Hotline, LGBT family caregivers support group, friends and family giving their time, treasure, wisdom, patience, and open acceptance as we navigate to a place of safety.

We are blessed ❤️

CONFUSED REALITY

My wife’s realities now transcend actual time and space as she moves in her mind in and out of years, ages, family relationships, births, deaths, friendships, jobs, air force duty, places lived and traveled. Confusion completing basic tasks is now prevalent. Imagining there are people living in our home, sleeping in our living room, asking me to prepare food for people, Kamala Harris and Michelle Obama, her parents, brothers, sisters, nieces who are in Philadelphia, some who have passed over 20 years ago. Talking for hours fully engaged in conversation with people in picture frames and on magazine covers.

TRUTH and UNDERSTANDING

Rather than trying to change her behavior or approach situations with logic or reasoning I understand that it is me who must accept her reality, no matter how it transforms. I must wholly embrace her for who she is now, becomes over time and still love her for the human being I fell in love with 31 years ago, whom I married 3 years ago. I must love her, protect her, whatever it takes, to reach the safety she deserves, and we deserve together. We are now at a point where we must surrender our freedom to live together so that each day is not braced with the constant and sudden danger of wandering.

WANDERING nearly 30 times in a year’s time

Last summer while visiting family in Philadelphia:

• Wandered for miles through the streets, traversing several neighborhoods going the wrong direction over and over, for hours in the middle of the night. Knocked on a stranger’s home at 1am convinced it was her brother’s home.

• Bent down to tie my shoe, looking up to see her quickly boarding the wrong train, barely able to join her as the doors closed and the conductor let me in.

• Searched for 8 hours into the night on foot, then with 4 separate cars to find her in a lobby of luxury apartment building, thinking she was in the Westin Hotel waiting for me.

Other examples:

• Got lost on the bus going downtown, ending up in Federal Way (25 miles away) barely made it home.

• Left while waiting for me in surgery, forgetting where I was, walked far, found a bus and went home.

• On a snowy November day, left, went to the post office, ended up gone for hours at QFC stuck in parking lot coming home with 4 bags of groceries paid for by strangers, pulling into our icy driveway with a stranger.

• Took a bus to sushi restaurant, ordered $115 in take out to feed us and her sisters, who were not here.

CREATING GOOD MEMORIES NOW

We are making good memories, new memories every day because we choose joy. We are racing with the devastating demise that dementia brings to the brain’s cognitive function. Clarity of mind and heart is not promised. We have today to live, learn and love in. After this year of slow and rapid changes seeing my loved one’s memory disappear into thin air, some memories return, others confuse, some are gone perhaps for good. Today she knows my name, last month she could not remember my brother Jason's name, though she sees him almost weekly.

I am on family leave working every day to raise the needed funds to move my young 66-year-old wife from our home into a secured memory care facility. Our little mighty house we hoped to age in place together is on a very busy arterial, close to buses, stores, parks. Those things are now conduits of dangerous journeys wandering by bus, foot, into the cars of strangers. Easy quick travel out the door in seconds when I am working on a Zoom call or sleeping in the night.

There's a song by one of our favorite musicians Kandice Springs asking her loved one to not break down on her. Well, I have broken down and will break down, but I will have faith, breathe again, keep on fighting and learning until A is in a safer place. To get there I am asking for your help.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

I must raise at least $54,000 to satisfy the private pay requirements for 6 months of care at a secured memory care facility. Once able to raise the private pay funds we can apply for Medicaid benefits to help pay for the remaining years of needed long-term care. Any gift will help my wife’s ability to transition as soon as possible to a safer environment to prevent her from acting on her daily urges to wander out the door and to keep her out of harm’s way.

Please consider donating today. Please send your prayers. If you know my wife, please come visit her now and help create a good new memory as we continue on our journey of dementia, as her health changes and social interaction becomes more critical to her well-being and sense of human connection.

Finally, if someone you love is experiencing signs of memory loss, please get diagnostic testing and contact the Alzheimer's Association. In love and light, thank you.