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| Queen Tenacious |
About 12 years ago (2006) my mother had some sort of break with reality. It was as if aliens had swooped down and abducted the woman I had always known to be my mother and replaced her with a body double void of a mind. She was merely an empty pod for the better part of several years. Naturally, the specialist she had been sent to see quickly diagnosed her with Alzheimer’s and put her on the usual course of meds to stabilize her condition and to slow down what the neurologist claimed would be a steady downward spiral. I never agreed with that diagnosis for many reasons. The primary reason was that I had first hand experience with Alzheimer’s and knew how it manifested itself in a person. I knew what to look for and what to expect. I had previously been the caretaker of an Alzheimer’s patient until that person's death. Slowly, I weaned her off the meds she had been prescribed for Alzheimer’s knowing full well that she'd decline rapidly without the meds IF indeed, her diagnosis was correct. No such decline ever took place! There was just the constant hum of nothingness with no improvement or decline.[Flash forward to 2018] My mother was talking to my SIL [sister in law] and rattling off about being in her art studio and all the "masterpieces" she has in various art shows and galleries. After my mother got done talking to my SIL, she handed me the phone. We exchanged the usual initial Blah! Blah! Blah! and then my SIL hesitated before asking me, "Am I missing something?" To that, I responded by telling her my mother had not only come back from whatever planet the aliens had been holding her hostage, but she now has her nose stuck in a book whenever she isn't out in her studio...just like before.
It was like the last 12 years hadn't happened except for all of us who had watched her trapped in some unresponsive void. I explained that the process had been very gradual, but in the past year or so she has made a full recovery from whatever it was that had her in lala land since 2006. One day the lights came back on and my mother returned home after her extended vacation. The various times I've asked my mother about that period of time, she has no clear recollection of anything. At best, the things she does remember is in bits and pieces and even those memories are very sketchy at best. To her, that void I speak of didn't really exist.
Not long ago my mother was sent back to the same doctor who had diagnosed her with Alzheimer’s for some entirely unrelated reason and that same doctor admitted that he had been wrong and was amazed by her miraculous "recovery." I could tell by the expression on his face he truly was dumbfounded. With a lot of hard work and persistence, I pulled my mother back from wherever abyss she had fallen into during her breakdown. I have to admit there were many times I thought I was ready for a rubber room, but I hung in there and did what I thought was right regardless of what the doctors told me. Today, I'm glad to say my mother is thriving at the young age of 90. The moral to this story is that sometimes you have to follow what your heart and instincts and cast aside what science and logic dictates. Welcome home, Mother!
The real Queen Tenacious
