Here's one, from when my mom was in a nursing home and her conversation had become barely connected with reality. Luckily, she still recognized me and my brother.
Mom: What have you been doing?
Me: Oh, I'm staying at John's [my brother's] new house.
Mom: John, buying a house?! That'll be the day!!
Me: No, he actually did buy a house, and it's really nice.
Mom (nodding): It
is a nice house.
She hadn't seen it.
Another time, I asked her on the phone if she'd had a nice time when her brother visited Denver recently. She said she hadn't seen him. I told her that he definitely had been in Denver. "Well, he didn't come to see me," she said. But of course, that's the entire reason he went to Denver!
I once interviewed a woman whose mother, while in assisted living, wandered off and joined a group of people touring the facility. She must have been fairly sharp because they didn't suspect her but the home's facilities went to look for her and found her there. Because she was "wandering," they put her in a memory care unit that was basically a hallway with doors on either side, maybe a small sitting area, and the door to the rest of the world locked. When she realized this is where she was to live for the rest of her life, she freaked out and caused so much trouble that the home's staff decided they couldn't handle her and kicked her out of the home. She went to another and another and the same thing happened. Finally she wound up in some home that kept her in a wheelchair so heavily drugged that she basically just sat there drooling all day.
The daughter, not wanting anyone else to have to go through that, quit her job as a sales rep. She traveled around the country collecting information on how to operate a senior home. Then she opened a couple small ones. They were completely different than the others she'd seen, run more like group homes. Pets and children were welcome. Staffers were encouraged to sit down and chat with people for as long as they wanted to talk. Heavy sedative drugs were minimized. Everyone seemed happy.
But the homes lost money. She couldn't make the business model work. She lost her life's savings and wound up selling the places to another company. They said they would carry on operating up to the standards she had set. But she's pretty sure they didn't.
And on a slightly cheerier note, I interviewed a retired couple a few years back in which the wife had Alzheimer's. The husband cheerfully learned to do all the household stuff she had done before. She was far gone enough that she couldn't really participate in a conversation, but she sat there listening and smiling when we talked. She had once loved to garden but now she couldn't name the flowers. She could take the dog on a daily walk, but only because the dog knew its way, which seemed kind of risky to me but had worked so far, I guess.
Still, it was really sweet. The husband wouldn't put her in a nursing home or even adult day care. "I'm just not ready to let go of her yet," he said. They would sit close together on the couch, watching TV or whatever, holding hands. They both seemed as happy as possible under the circumstances.
