6 I The Yarmouth Vanguard
January 27, 2015
‘Yes Norma, you’re my mom’
When Alzheimer’s
forces the child to
become the parent
There are situations affecting many fam-
ilies where, later in life, children become the
caregiver of a parent. Where they are forced
to make decisions over a parent’s care.
Where the relationship they once experi-
enced with their parent changes, not by
choice, but due to circumstances. This is
one such story.
By Tina Comeau
THE VANGUARD
www.thevanguard.ca
Her laugh is endearing.
Her smile, when she shares it, infec-
tious, as it causes you to smile back.
She looks at the woman seated across
from her, at times with so much curiosity
etched on her face that you can’t help but
wonder what she’s thinking about.
Or likely what she is struggling to
remember.
The woman seated beside her at the
table refers to her by her first name.
“Norma, let’s have some soup.”
“Norma, look at me.”
Sometimes Norma will respond.
Sometimes not.
When asked why she calls Norma by
her first name, Tam MacPhee – the
woman feeding Norma her lunch – looks
Norma Tedford laughs and smiles, even though her
thoughts are confused and her memory has faded.
TINA COMEAU PHOTO
into the women’s eyes and says, “Because
if I call her mom, she doesn’t always
remember she’s my mother.”
And then she might not get any
response at all.
F or Tam MacPhee and her mother Nor-
ma Tedford, their relationship has changed.
It is one of a countless number of situa-
tions where the child becomes the parent.
And the parent becomes the child.
For these two women their roles have
been reversed not by choice, but by
Alzheimer’s.
Alzheimer’s has robbed Norma of her
memory. Robbed her of her common
sense. Robbed her of the way she used to
behave.
It has stolen things from her daughter
Norma Tedford stares off as her daughter Tam MacPhee feeds
her lunch. The daughter has brought her mother, who has
Alzheimer’s, to live with them in their home until she can be
placed in a seniors’ facility. TINA COMEAU PHOTO
What is
Alzheimer’s?
Alzheimer’s is a disease of the brain. It
is a fatal, progressive and degenerative
disease that destroys brain cells. The
most common form of dementia,
Alzheimer’s disease affects men and
women of all races, religions and
socio-economic backgrounds. It is not
a normal part of aging and no one is
immune.
(Source: Alzheimer Society of Nova
Scotia)
as well. The meaningful conversations
between a mother and daughter are gone.
The weekly lunches at a restaurant have
stopped. The trips they used to take are a
thing of the past.
Because so much has been taken away,
it makes the rewards, in their infinite sim-
plicity, mean so much.
“I don’t look for rewards, but I find them
when she thanks me for tucking her in at
night and says, ‘I love you too,’ uses my name
sometimes, gets out a couple of thoughts
that make sense, walks by and hugs and
squeezes me for no reason,” Tam says.
As the family waits for a nursing home
placement for Norma, who is 68, Tam (one
of Norma’s four children) has taken her
mother into her home. And it’s a busy
home at that.
Living here are a husband and wife
who own and operate a trucking compa-
ny. Two boys at home – one a teenager,
the other almost a teenager – who both
play rep hockey. An older son studying
elsewhere. Two dogs that bark when
someone new comes to the door.
The first thought was it would be tem-
porary.
Norma has been here since last June.
Tam could sign a paper that would
expand a nursing home search to any-
where in the province, instead of just
locally. It might speed up the process of
finding her a placement. But what if Nor-
ma was placed in a home in Sydney? In
Halifax? That’s too far from Yarmouth, her
daughter says.
“I at least want to be there once every day
to feed her,” says Tam, who worries other-
wise her mother might fade away to nothing.
Once when Norma had come back
from a respite, she had lost eight pounds.
T am MacPhee calls them her tricks of
the trade. The ways she can get Norma to
eat. First there is the hand holding so her
mother doesn’t swat the food away. Then
there are the heaping spoonfuls to maxi-
mize every bite of food she takes into her
mouth. There is the eye contract to keep
her from becoming distracted. Calling her
by her name so she focuses on the person
who is feeding her. Continued on Page 7

10 warning signs
of Alzheimer’s
• Memory loss that affects day-to-day
function
• Difficulty performing familiar tasks
• Problems with language
• Disorientation of time and place
• Poor or decreased judgment
• Problems with abstract thinking
• Misplacing things
• Changes in mood and behavior
• Changes in personality
• Loss of initiative
(Source: Alzheimer Society of Nova Scotia)
Norma… Cont. from Page 6
“She could try to get up and leave 10 or 20
times during her meal,” says Tam. “And rarely
does she pick something up and eat it. She
just plays with it. She can’t make her own
decisions that I need more food to survive.”
It is hard and at times exhausting to be
caring for an Alzheimer’s patient. In a
sense it is like looking after a toddler.
A gate blocks off a set of stairs in the
MacPhee home and stools are strategical-
ly placed at the entrance to a hallway to
prevent Norma from wandering. A door-
bell is attached to the door of Norma’s
room that rings in Tam’s bedroom so she
knows when her mother wakes up in the
morning.
Because Tam can’t stay at home full
time due to her job, home care workers
come in for shifts. The family receives sev-
en hours of personal home care, which
Tam has to be home for, and 10 hours of
respite. She spreads those 10 respite hours
out so she can go to work and do errands.
Still, sometimes it takes a long time to
leave the house. If someone new is com-
ing in Tam has to go over four pages of
notes on ways to make tending Norma
easier.
B
ecause her children are very active in
sports and travel a lot for games, there are
weekends when Tam needs – and wants –
to be with her children. On these weekends
A mother daughter moment on the couch
in the MacPhee home. On the table are
books that are reminders of Norma’s past.
Norma Tedford smiles and she talks with her daughter Tam MacPhee, even though the words she speaks don’t make
sense. To her they do.
she hires people to look after her mother,
although sometimes such scheduling does-
n’t always work out. Sometimes there are
last-minute cancellations.
“One time I had to leave on a Friday
and I came back on Sunday. My brother
did one shift but it was still $500 for me to
be gone for the other people I had to hire
for shifts.”
Handholding, hugs and love are a big part of this
mother-daughter relationship. TINA COMEAU PHOTOS
The more weekends she’s gone with
her kids, the most costly it becomes, even
with government funding help.
The family has gotten respite beds in
the past, but they’ve also been denied.
One seniors facility is concerned Norma is
a flight risk. At another facility she was
very agitated and difficult to control. Both
facilities say Norma’s needs are greater
than what they are equipped to handle
with the size staff they have. So these
respite options are no longer available.
The last respite Norma qualified was in
Caledonia in a secure Alzheimer’s unit.
That is a two-hour drive away.
Tam says because some local facilities
feel they aren’t able to cope with her
mother’s needs when it comes to a respite
bed, they’re also not going to be able to
take her in when her turn comes up on the
waiting list for a long-term bed, unless it is
in a secure Alzheimer’s unit, which is the
type of care Norma requires. Not all facili-
ties have such units and for those that do
the wait may be a few months, or it could
be a year or longer.
“I didn’t know seniors could be refused
because they require too much care,” Tam
says. This has all been a learning curve.
Her mother does take medication to
help calm her down and while at times
she is agitated or upset, she’s not always
like this, says Tam. A lot of the time her
mother is happy. Very busy, admittedly,
but content.
“But we are left feeling that mom is
labelled as a bad senior,” Tam says. “Patience,
love, hugs and kindness is what they need
when they are confused and upset.”
And families need to feel supported too.
The Yarmouth Vanguard
January 27, 2015 I 7
S
ometimes Tam will use the word
mom.
“She’ll look at me, ‘Mom?’ and I’ll say,
‘Yes, you’re my mom,’ and she’ll say, ‘Oh,
okay.’ Other times she won’t react at all.
Still, Tam is always on the lookout for
those glimpses of her mom.
In a way Tam knew what to expect. When
she was a teenager, her grandmother – Nor-
ma’s mother – also developed Alzheimer’s
and lived in the home with them.
Tam’s children also use Norma’s first
name a lot.
“They don’t use grand-mom a lot any-
more, which is kind of sad. They use Nor-
ma because she responds and answers to
it, whereas they could say ‘grand-mom’
and she doesn’t know that anymore,
except for once in a while.”
But they hug her, they dance with her –
Norma loves her 50s and 60s music – and
most importantly they love her. Tam says
having her mother in their home has taught
her children a lot about compassion.
Tam, meanwhile, admits that she wor-
ries for her own future. Will Alzheimer’s lay
claim to her as well? All she knows for now
is that she’ll never give up on her mom.
“Even though she says words that
totally don’t make any sense with the con-
versation, I know she’s still in there trying
to connect the pieces. Sometimes she’ll
walk up to you and say, ‘Can I tell you
something?’ and you’re like, ‘Yes,’ but then
she says, ‘Oh never mind,’ because she
can’t remember what it was. You want so
bad to know what she’s thinking.”
Other times she may get out three
thoughts in a row that make some sense.
Not quite a meaningful conversation, but
for Tam close enough.
“She’s 80 per cent the patient, and 20 per
cent of the time my mom,” says Tam, refer-
ring to the circumstance life has dealt them.
Except for when hugs are traded. It’s then
that the percentage sways the other way.
During those tight embraces when
Norma holds Tam in her arms, it feels like
she hasn’t forgotten that she’s her mother.
Because no mother could forget how to
hug like this.
The waiting
game . . .
Can seniors be turned down for a nurs-
ing home bed if their needs are
deemed too excessive?
Tony Kiritsis, a spokesperson for
the province’s Department of Health
and Wellness, says according to the
Facility Placement Policy, an adult in
need of protection would be deemed a
priority one and could be placed in a
long-term care facility ahead of some-
one on the waitlist.
“All licensed facilities would be
equipped to deal with clients with very
high needs, including dementia,” he
says. “The policy does outline that a
facility does have the right to refuse an
applicant if the facility can demon-
strate that they do not have the
resources to properly meet the appli-
cant’s needs.”
In this part of the province the facil-
ities with secure Alzheimer’s units are
Roseway Manor in Shelburne, The
Meadows in Yarmouth and the Villa
Acadienne in Meteghan.
Not everyone with dementia
requires a secure unit.