Living with dementia means having a game plan to manage the disease

The Daily Gleaner

By CHERYL CLOCK
The Canadian Press
CATHARINES, Ont. - Taped to her living room wall are words that give her strength. Words that give her hope.
A woman from the Alzheimer Society of Niagara Region gave her these words.

And Margaret Ball, a 58-year-old grandmother, reads them every day.

"Worry looks around, Sorry looks back, Faith looks up."

"I believe God only gives you what you can handle," she said from her home in Beamsville, Ont. "God gave it to me. He must know I can handle it."

For the most part, Ball is positive. Strong. She's in the earliest stages of dementia and has resolved to live her life to the best of her ability.

She laughs (even at herself and some challenges she encounters with her short-term memory). She contributes. Appreciates. And still feels a sense of purpose.

She wants people to know that life doesn't end with a diagnosis of dementia. That it goes on. And there can still be joy.

At first, it wasn't obvious. Sometimes she repeated herself. Other times she just seemed a little absent-minded. But isn't everyone?

Then something happened that no one could reason away.

Kevin Sharpen, her 35-year-old son who lives in Hamilton, tells the story. Although it happened just a few years ago, his mother remembers nothing.

Ball was driving a bus, on her way back to the daycare where she worked in Burlington, Ont. It was the morning. She had just dropped off the last of the children at school. Sharpen was at home when she called, crying and panicked.

"Kevin," she sobbed, "I don't know where I am."

"What do you mean?" said Sharpen.

His mother was in the bus. Lost, somewhere along the route she had travelled for years. Sharpen called her boss. Somehow they found her.

Doctors checked her out but didn't have any answers. She was fine for a while. Then, while at the daycare, Ball passed out. Twice.

Again she was checked over. Again, no obvious problem.

Then, in the period of a month, she was in two accidents. In one, she was driving in downtown Hamilton, got disoriented, drove into oncoming traffic and hit a sign post.

Still, doctors had no answers.

The final straw came the day she passed out while doing laundry in her apartment building.

This time, doctors found something. A condition in which her heart stops beating momentarily, for a fraction of a second. And dementia. Likely.......read the whole article

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