Table 1 Getting a diagnosis
Subtheme | Data |
|---|---|
First signs | “I didn’t realize at the time something was – I knew she was different, but I thought well, she’s just getting older, maybe that’s the way it is, but I realized it later on that year where something was different than I was thinking.” ~ Rudy |
“Well, preceding that she was having memory problems. For example, she liked to bake, she was a good cook. And she would make a recipe, a fairly familiar one and it wouldn’t turn out and of course that recipe resulted from her leaving out something that was essential.” ~ Dale | |
Diagnosis | “It took, well, took two years of testing. They did every test in the book to try and figure out, well to try to find if it was something else, and everything else showed that it was fine. We had to come to grips with Alzheimer’s and he was diagnosed.” ~ Lois |
Preparing | “That is something, mind you, as far as funeral arrangements we decided together… Helen and I used to talk a lot and discuss different situations so we had a pretty good feeling of what we wanted, so we set it up that way. ” ~Rudy |
“So what we did is we dealt with doctors and healthcare workers, CPAS [Client Patient Access Services], lawyers, accountants, those types of things; we were pro-active rather than reactive. What we tried to do is ensure that there was care and protection for her for her safety…” ~ Laurie | |
Accepting the next step | “Every so often I would catch him sitting with a little tear in his eyes {she points to the corner of her eye and drags her finger down her cheek}. That was when I knew he had a moment of clarity that he saw the future and he knew how much he had lost.” ~ Lois |
“I’d say, ‘Okay, what can we do, I can’t lift you’, ‘Oh, just get me a bottle of aspirins… so I was angry he wasn’t facing the future… He was so angry, he just could not grasp this next step, and it was evident to me the whole time long that, that he could not grasp that, and the pills had nothing to do with dying at that moment, it had to do with not going to the nursing home, and I knew that.” ~ Alice |