July 25, 2004
Keeping Out
Well I figured out the Keep Out signs in all their proliferation. Here's the story , which slipped my mind.
I wrote about it a year ago, when I was reading Elmer Green's evolvement journal "The Ozawkie Book of the Dead". He believed that his wife, love, and lifelong colleague, who suffered from Alzheimer's the last six years of her life, was processing some of the split off parts of herself which she had not done in her "conscious life", as preparation for moving up the spiritual executive ladder to Guide in the Bardo.
After a peripherial, attention fluttering perusal of Theosophy and Krishnamurti this year, I now realize that Elmer and Alice Green were/are Theosophists -- although he never mentions theosophy directly, "The Ozawkie Book of the Dead" is chock full of theosophical systems and ideas.
Along similar lines, this week I received a call from my mother's caretakers that she is experiencing "Sundowner's Syndrome" . Round about four in the afternoon, she begins to hallucinate. My mother, the epitome of ladylike sweetness in her dementia, becomes paranoid and violent. She kicks and bites and refuses anti anxiety medicine as poison. They had to give her an injection to calm her down, and are starting her on a regimen of afternoon Ativan to prevent such events in the future. Her nurse asked me if she had been in the war or the Holocaust, since her ideation is so frightening and violent, full of guns and bombs. She hadn't, at least externally, in this life.
My dear aunt, her much abused sister , also had hallucinations at the end of her days. They began awakening her in the middle of the night. She thought the radio was broadcasting a chorus singing, "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean" . Since she was completely deaf without her hearing aides, we thought the broadcast unlikely. Not to mention that it had certainly been awhile since that old ditty had been heard on the airwaves. Nonetheless, my aunt did spend the night in the twin bed next to my mother, so that she could be certain that the Scottish chorus was a fig newton of her imagination. My mother told me she listened carefully at her sister's head when she was awakened by song, but could hear nothing. A true scientific investigation.
Later my aunt was followed everywhere by a bevy of cheerful children . She once told me that they were sitting beside me on the couch . She did not mind them, but they could be a distraction.
It took me a very long time to get a psychiatric consultation for my aunt, since her primary care was resistant to the idea of hallucinations, and felt this was normal -- now I think, maybe it was. After the long-awaited consult, the psychiatrist prescribed an antipsychotic, Haldol, for my aunt. My friend, a neurologist, felt it was too powerful for a frail, little old lady. When I called my aun'ts primary care to suggest something with fewer side effects, her PC told me that she would never consider taking my aunt off Haldol, since she had expressed such relief and gratitude when the children disappeared.
I am interested in the disparity of content between my mother and my aunt's hallucinations. If Elmer Green is right, and my mother is processing unintegrated aspects of herself, they certainly are violent and frightening. I experienced them that way too. My aunt, a children's librarian by profession, had a bunch of frolicking children. Hallucination Light. She was a much nicer person in her day.
I wonder if I should I intervene and suggest another psychiatric consultation?
Ativan is an antianxiety drug, which is habituating, but do we care at age 96 when being comfortable is a high priority? Withdrawal from Ativan is really difficult. Supposedly there is a backlash when you try to quit, and your anxiety increases horribly.
The women in my family seem to have hallucinations at the end of their long lives. Let's hope Elmer is right, and that processing split off parts of the self as one lives along, is a preventative measure. Or, if I do have to have hallucinations, they will be pretty .
Photo note: Dendrites waving in the breeze
Posted by Dakota at July 25, 2004 07:19 PM