Martha H

Dear B Y,

My mother is on 5 prescription drugs for congestive heart failure, after nearly choking to death in May 2003 when water almost filled up her lungs. First symptom was shortness of breath, difficulty getting up stairs, stopping every 10 steps or so on a walk.

Mom always had a 'logical' explanation for her symptoms - of course I am short of breath on those steep stairs, at my age. I stop to : choose one - admire a nice car, look at a nice front lawn, flowers, shrubs, to look at a store window, to speak to a neighbor. Every 10 steps, a pause.

Finally when the shortness of breath became alarming, we took her to the ER. She was treated for 4 days and released with 6 new meds. One was a statin. Shortly afterwards her memory problem became immensely worse.

She is still on 5 of the drugs and her heart is ' OK.' Yet there is swelling in her ankles, much worse now that she spends all day in a wheelchair, and she bruises very easily, having black and blue marks on legs and arms without having bumped into anything, at least nothing anyone saw or remembered.

Your Mom is ever so much younger, and her heart problem can be fixed. But she does have to remember the medicines! Now may be a good time for the hospital to assess the level of her Dementia, and come up with some helpful ideas for her future care.

While Mom was hospitalized we expected the worst. My brother and I drove to the old neighborhood where we grew up, Harlem, looked at the ancient house now dwarfed between 2 huge co-op complexes .. in our youth the 5 story walkup tenement was a BIG building.

We couldn't believe our good luck when Mom recovered so quickly. Yet, the very first time I took her out (just walking around the block) and stopped at the brand new corner cafe for lunch, she completely misunderstood where we were. She kept making comments about having been there before and eating pizza. That was a restaurant about 4 blocks away, she was not ready to walk that far. Later she said I enjoyed being back at the place again. At the time I corrected her 'mistakes." I said we have never been there before, this was the first time.

Later the same day "I am glad we had lunch at the pizzeria again, I love pizza." We had eaten hamburgers.

This was my introduction to Mom's Dementia, only a week or so after the heart event. Connected? Maybe. Docs said no.

My thoughts are with you!

Love,

Martha