I Lost a Friend

I had a friend that i have known since 8th grade. Dementia/Alzheimer's runs in her family. Her grandmother, mother and then she got the dreaded disease. Her mother and grandmother were ill a long time. I told her i would visit her when i came up for our reunion. She had been diagnosed a year earlier.

The day of the party, the assisted living staff found her non responsive in the hallway. She was taken to the hospital. I visited her there and we had a good conversation. The next day, they found her on her hands and knees crawling in the hallway of the hospital. They put her to bed and she had a grand mal seizure. The MRI showed no tumors and only mild frontal lobe disintegration.

Her daughter asked that a medicine be discontinued because it was giving her trouble. On Saturday night, she stopped breathing and was pronounced dead at 12:04AM.

I am so grateful I got to see her and so sad to lose my friend.

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PoetryNEmotion · F

Condolences. I remember when you wrote about her here previously. Now she has peace. That is what counts. I am glad she went peacefully.

akindheart · 61-69, F

@PoetryNEmotion her daughter had one medicine stopped and she just stopped breathing. i wonder if the meds were keeping her alive past her time.

PoetryNEmotion · F

@akindheart It is irrelevant now. She has peace. That is comforting to everyone, I believe. I find that demented people run down like old clocks. At some point, they just stop working. Their bodies give up. This I feel from my nearly 30 years of nursing, heart.

akindheart · 61-69, F

@PoetryNEmotion i knew you would have witnessed this kind of thing.

PoetryNEmotion · F

@akindheart I focus upon the peace. My mom was demented for a few years. Peace is what she desired. Her time came. She got it. So did those of us who loved her and tended her. The rest? Gullty and loud sobs. Karma.