The brain is amazing

6 years ago I had a severe head trauma.  I was chasing Ryley down the stairs and I must have missed a stair and I cracked the tile at the bottom of the stairs, with my head.   I was in a coma for 4 days and when I came out of it I couldn't walk, I couldn't talk properly, I couldn't read, I couldn't do a lot of things.  I broke the hardest part of the skull, the temporal bone and all the bones in my inner ear.  Dr. Chevalier told me I was 4mm from death.  Had the skull fracture been 4 mm to the right it would have severed an artery and I probably would have died or at the very least, been left in a vegetative state.  I had oodles and oodles of therapy and vestibular therapy for the inner ear damage and overtime I got better.  Today the only reminent of my brain injury is darkness and rarely my speech.  I get vertigo in the dark or when I close my eyes, so I don't take showers because you have to close your eyes (I do take baths) and I sleep with a nightlight.  When I am very tired I wix my mords and I might say something like crappers instead of crackers or affle instead of apple.   
I saw Dr. Chevalier for one last time the week before I moved home to Alberta.  He is still amazed.  By all accounts I should still have some cognitive difficulties or something.  But I don't.  His office is located in the Step Down Unit of the Kamloops hospital.  It's a unit where stroke and brain injury patients go to recover.  I volunteered there about a year after my injury and twice a week I would go and read to patients or take them for a little stroll or do a puzzle with them or just chat.  I would see people who didn't have as severe head trauma as I had experienced but they were struggling with everything from speech to walking.  I was amazed then and now seeing how dementia effects different people, I am even more amazed.  The brain is simply amazing.  I managed to retrain my brain but people with dementia can't.
Marie and Brenda are on mom's ward and they are both considered end stage.  They both walk with walkers, can talk and tell me wonderful stories of their youth and childhood.  Both of them have very similar symptoms. Like incontinence and no short term memory.  Everyday and I do mean everyday they sit beside each other by the fish tank and everyday the conversation is the same.  "Hi, I'm Marie, what's your name?"
"I'm Brenda, nice to meet to you Marie, where are you from?"  Marie will smile, "Well Brenda, I'm from Water Valley, my husband Ansfrid and I have a ranch there" (her husband has been gone for many, many years) and so the conversation continues and everyday the same two ladies become new friends.  It must be wonderful to make a new friend everyday, even if it is the same friend as yesterday.
Everyday I feed my mom and Evelyn.  Evelyn can talk, she walks with a walker and she can feed herself but she goes on the nod a lot so I have to help her.  Mom actually got jealous one day and snapped at Evelyn and said "MY daughter!".  But Evelyn is going blind because of the dementia and she has no long term or short term memory.  She thinks she's 103 years old but really she is 83 years old.  I'll ask her "Evelyn, how was your morning?".  She'll answer "I think it was good".  If I ask her if she likes broccoli she'll answer "I don't know".  She doesn't know, she can't remember and she knows it.  Some days she gets really depressed and doesn't want to eat and she'll ask me to let her die.  I try as best I can to cheer her up by telling her that I need her and she can't go yet.  I do need her, she is giving my life a lot of purpose right now.
Robbie is also on the end stage ward.  He can't talk, he can't walk but he does shuffle himself around in a wheelchair and gets himself in and out of it.  He's on oxygen but has never smoked in his life.  Some dementia patients will develop a constant breathlessness and are on oxygen 24/7.  Robbie is an incredible crib player.  He plays just like my grandpa did.  He gently slaps my hand when I miss a point and then he takes the point from me.  He skunks me often.  When I get him coffee or put his bib on him he always grabs my hand in both of his to say thank you and he always waves when I or my dad pass him in the hallway.
Arlene is a sad soul.  She's 93 and also end stage.  She can't walk, she does talk and she does eat but only mashed potatoes with gravy and minced meat.  That's it, for breakfast too.  She sadly sits in the doorway of her room and repeats the same thing all day.  One day it might be "Nurse, please help me my stomach hurts".
The next day it will be "Nurse, please help me my leg hurts".  The next day it might be "Nurse, please help me, my finger hurts" (Actually her finger probably does hurt as they found a skin cancer under the finger nail and had to remove the tip).  But all day she will repeat the same phrase.  I stop and talk to her, she will talk and carry on a conversation about the weather or whatever, but within seconds of me leaving she reverts back to "Nurse, please help me, my arm hurts".
There is Marjorie who sometimes walks with her walker and other times prefers her chair.  She was on the lock down ward with Pick's dementia but the wandering has stopped.  She needs help with everything including eating and she tends babble nonsensical words that aren't words.  Then out of the blue she will burst into 'Some Enchanted Evening' or 'New York, New York' or whatever tune comes into her mind.  Her husband lives in the supportive living and comes every night to feed her dinner.  She was voice/singing coach and in her youth in the 40's was a singer in the dance halls of Ontario.
My mom, well even in the short time I've been here I've watched her slip.  She doesn't rock or moan and make weird noises like some of the residents do.  She just watches people and now often cries when she watches them.  Somewhere in her brain she remembers what she could do just a short time ago.  She's sad and it shows.  She can still read though.  When the news comes on, she always reads aloud the by-lines that flash at the bottom of the screen.  It's like she's trying to hang on to the one thing she has left.  Just a few days ago she lost another connection in her brain.  She can chew and she can swallow liquid but she can no longer chew food and then swallow.  Her brain has forgotten how.  So, she chews and chews and chews and even a gentle press to the neck won't trigger the swallow response, nor will touching the right side of her tongue.  What she does do is chew and chew and chew and the instead of pushing the bolus to the back of her mouth, she pushes it to the front and it all comes out.  Vermont has put her on a liquid diet of protein drinks, fortified breakfast drinks and fruit and vegetable juices.  We still put the food in front of her and give her little bites to swallow with a drink.  It only a matter of time before the rest of the chewing and swallowing connections in her brain disappear.  They have changed her designation from M1 resident to C1 resident.  C1 means that it's no longer controlling or treating symptoms, it means it's now pallative care.
I was watching the fish today.  They swim around and around and around.  Some fish only have a 30 second memory span.  Imagine that every 30 seconds you forget everything you ever knew and start fresh again with new memory.  The residents are like the fish.  They wander around and around the ward and everyday they don't know where they are or why they are there and one day, they'll float to the top.