By Dixie 
He is named Lucky because 14 years ago he survived being a starving stray dog crossing a busy highway several times a day. My nickname for him is Mr. Wags. He is a chill sort of doggo who doesn’t demand attention like our other bratz. He makes his own happiness. One of his favorite games is pretending not to want a treat, turning away, then snatching it from my hand and tossing it in the air like a toy and running to get it. In two seconds, he can go from being in a dead sleep to hysterically barking and throwing his body around like a ping pong ball should he smell an unfamiliar dog or chicken wing.
Now he looks less like a Mr. Wags and more like Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh. His tail is dragging, head down, constant wandering and very little interest in food. He was my Velcro dog as soon as the Weather Channel predicted storms and now…nothing. Even a cheese wrapper, the ultimate dog magnet, doesn’t get his attention. He can’t hear.
He will come in a room and stand in one spot for several minutes like he can’t remember why he came there. I can personally relate to that and thought maybe he was just feeling his age like me. But last week when it was freezing cold, I found him shivering outside the back door because he forgot how to push in the dog door. I held him in a blanket for a long time after that.
His vision has changed. He isn’t walking into furniture or walls but he can only see when something is directly in front of him. Like my other older dogs (and me) he has cataracts, but his side vision is gone now. I pet him every time I see him now, to assure him he’s safe.
My boy is losing weight and wobbling sometimes. He paces randomly splay-legged from room to room all night if I don’t confine him. He eventually falls asleep and he sleeps so hard that I watch to make sure he is breathing.
I hand feed him now throughout the day, a bite at a time. On good days he has an appetite and eats from a bowl himself. Sometimes he stands over his water bowl for several minutes before he drinks. I feed him in a quiet room so he won’t be distracted.
He has good days. He willingly eats a whole serving of food. He sleeps through the night. He will walk up and down the driveway with me. His ears and tail stand up, if only for a moment. He looks at me. He’s here, still.
I know Lucky’s life is more measured by quality than quantity now and my job is to make sure he is as healthy, safe and happy as possible. I took him to the vet to make sure he is not in any pain.
The vet said he has dementia. She prescribed pain meds as a ‘just in case’ since he may have old age pains (again I can relate) and a lower dosage of the dementia meds my Mama had. Dementia.
But even though Lucky is not human, there are so many similarities with Mama’s disease.
Getting lost in a familiar area:
Before Mama was diagnosed and she still drove, she got lost coming back from the gas station. She went the wrong way and wound up 30 miles up the road in a neighboring town. She couldn’t explain how she made it back home. Thank God for whoever helped her that day, and that she didn’t get lost in bad weather, wreak the car or wind up being robbed or worse.
Eating changes:
One of the first times I knew something was wrong with her was when she called me to bring her some flour because she was making her always-requested Thanksgiving dressing. Any good Southerner knows there is no flour in cornbread dressing. She insisted it had always had flour and made it anyway (it was terrible).
She started forgetting other favorite foods, saying that she ‘had never had this before’. Food she used to love began to taste bitter to her and it was a challenge to find anything she might eat from one day to the next.
I eventually had to turn off her stove at the breaker because she tried to heat up soup in a plastic bowl directly on the burner. Later in her disease she forgot the process of how to eat. I would sit across from here and she would mimic me eating fork to plate, then fork to mouth, chew and swallow. She eventually forgot how to swallow and would pocket food in her cheek.
Tunnel vision:
Put your hands at the side of your face and block your side view. That’s tunnel vision, but you can still take your hands away, but people with dementia can’t. Mama would panic when she was a passenger in a car because she could only see cars and trees as they popped in front of her field of vision. There was no peripheral side view to give her a warning. She said it was my driving but even when the car was stopped, she fake-braked so hard I thought her foot was going to go right through the floorboard. She could still see the cars going in front of us and would get startled every time.
Pacing and forgetting how to sleep:
One night Mama started pacing. She wandered from room to room, saying she was trying to find something but had forgotten what it was. She walked in the house with her walker in front of her and me behind her. She refused to go to bed, just wanted to walk; midnight came, 2am, 4am, no sleep, just walking. I gave her warm milk, melatonin, anything I could think of with carbs, and finally poured her (and me) a glass of wine at around 6am. She thankfully stopped to sit down to drink it. When her caregiver came at 8, we were on our third glass each (I told her to pour her a glass because she was going to need it). Mama finally fell asleep and was asleep for two days. We checked her breathing constantly, called her doctor and was told she was fine, just tired and her body had shut down to rest.
Dementia patients often say they want to ‘go home’. Mama had lived in this house for 40 years but she still wanted to go ‘home’. She would ask how the place we were in looked so much like her house. She paced because she was looking for the place where she felt safe (and sane) and unafraid. Her body wanted to sleep but her strong will to reach home overrode it, until it couldn’t override anymore.
Personality can change positively or negatively. We were fortunate that Mama remained a sweet person with a wicked sense of humor. Early on when she had fallen and was bedridden for a month, I had my first time cleaning her after a bowel movement. It was awkward and we both were embarrassed so I tried to lighten the mood a little. It just happened to be my birthday (yahoo me!) so I said, “Mama, this time 58 years ago you were in labor with me.” She was laying on her side faced away from me and turned her head to say, “Yeah, payback is Hell ain’t it?”
Mama taught me so much during those hard couple of years. I wouldn’t give anything for that time with her. And my little old man Lucky too.
We will get through this just fine.