I dialed the number to return the call of the nursing home. The nurse who answered the phone was relieved to hear my voice on the other line: “Dr. Mass, thank God you called back! She has been pacing since she woke up, and she refuses to take her meds. We’ve kept her away from Catherine, so they don’t get into another fistfight. But we can’t handle her here anymore. We think we might have to send her to a psych unit, and we need you to come help.”
“I’ll be right there.” The Alzheimer’s patient we were discussing was in prime physical shape for a woman her age, but cognitively she was in the worst shape of anyone on her unit. Since the degenerative disease began laying claim to her brain, we had witnessed her personality change drastically, as the once-dedicated altruist became more and more prone to violent outbursts. The woman didn’t recognize any of her 5 kids who regularly visited, and though she hadn’t been informed of the recent death of her husband of more than 5 decades (she couldn’t process the information), I suspected that on some level she was aware, and her current behavior was the only way she could grieve.
And this hurt me to my core. Because she wasn’t just any patient, in fact, she wasn’t my patient at all. She was my mother.
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