Mom's brain must be one in a million

My mother was a young woman when she developed mental illness.  I use the term mental illness because not only was she mentally ill (at times) but no one specific diagnosis was ever given.  There is one that was the baseline diagnosis, Bi-polar disorder (or manic depression as it was called).  Even with that baseline though it was then classified to a type 1, then a type 2 and then a shrink threw in rapid cycling once and another doctor added Schizoid Affective Disorder and another doctor mentioned Paranoid Schizophrenia once and yet another shrink threw in Narcissistic Personality Disorder.  It seems to me that whenever a new mental illness was created to add more pages to DSM (diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders) then a doctor would add another page to mom's diagnosis.  With every new edition and addition came a new drug or in mom's case drugs.  Over the years I'm sure my mother has taken every psychotropic drug there ever was.  When you add in the fact that she's been treated with ECT (electro-convulsive treatment) enough times to light up a small city, it's really quite amazing that she has any mind left at all.
The sad part of mom's mental illness is that it's a factor in the dementia.  For the last 7 years as mom's mental health continued to decline, me, my father and the family all attributed it to mental illness.  Her psychiatrist did the same and so each time a new symptom developed, he would add another drug or take away another drug or add a different classification of drug to negate the side effects that we all thought were caused by either mental illness or the drugs she was taking.  Really, her medications were changed so often that the pharmacy would not do week long bubble packs.  What makes this sad is not only was my mother essentially treated like a lab rat by the psychiatrists but an error in judgement on our and their parts missed what is now obvious.  Mom had been suffering with dementia for years and it wasn't until the physical symptoms of dementia began was she then and only then properly diagnosed.   Had mom been diagnosed with the obvious let's say 4 years ago, then some of the drugs for dementia could have been prescribed to slow the process.  Well, now it's to late for that and giving her those drugs now would have no effect what so ever.
When mom was getting physically ill early in the year, I begged dad to take her to Canmore hospital and not to the usual Rockyview psych ward.  I told him that this just doesn't seem like her normal mental illness and maybe the medications need to be looked at and Dr. Fedema would do that.  Dad agreed and the first thing that Dr. Fedema did was wean mom off of  8 different medications.  When that weaning process was done mom's physical symptoms were getting worse and Dr. Fedema called in a Geriatric specialist.  After a very intense assessment, the diagnosis of dementia was given.
Over the next few months, mom's physical symptoms got worse and worse.  Dad started the paperwork for admission to an extended care facility but he always intended to keep her at home as long and he could and he intended that would be to the very end.  As I mentioned before, Dad always thought she would get better and even today, there is a part of him that still does.   I also think that dad feels a little guilty because I know that I do.  If we had paid more attention to mom's symptoms, then we would have seen them and not been so complacent with the doctors.  There are days when I pray for forgiveness because I should have seen it, but I was too wrapped up in my own life.
When I moved here one of the first things I did was request to see what medications mom was still on.  Many of them were psychotropic drugs that I felt were no longer needed.  Dad agreed and so did the nurses and the nurse practitioner.  So mom was weaned off of those drugs and since her blood pressure had been stable (especially since she lost 50 lbs.), they weaned her off of those drugs too as they can cause drowsiness.  I must say that just in little over a week of being completely off all but one drug, my mom is the most alert that she's been in months.  Everyone who cares for her and sees her often agrees.  There have been no psychotic episodes and if she is little depressed on some days, well given the situation, that's normal.  She's there more often and I like it.  At lunch yesterday she said to Evelyn "Wake up Evelyn, it's time to eat lunch".  I smiled because Evelyn was on the nod and mom knows that I help Evelyn eat and that she has to be alert or she might choke.
What bothers me the most about this isn't that we missed the obvious.  Rather it's the irony of it all.  Mom needed all those treatments and she needed all of those medications.  They prevented her from getting psychotic and they brought her out of catatonic depressions and made life bearable for her and for all of us.  She was a slave to her mind for almost all of her life and yet today she doesn't need those drugs but is now tortured by her mind with dementia.  It's simply not fair.  Mom's brain really must be one in a million and she's one in a million too and I'm so very glad that she's my mother.