Please Pull The Plug

When I was younger, I volunteered in a nursing home. This was my first experience with Alzheimer’s. I was bothered by the things I saw but I didn’t quite grasp the immensity of the disease.

After graduate school, I worked many rotations in a geriatric psychiatric ward which mostly consisted of various types of dementia and Alzheimer’s. This time round, it was hard NOT to miss the devastation heaped upon the patients as well as the families.

Rich, poor, educated, uneducated – nothing mattered that caused these individuals to become so ill.

The reason I was touched so significantly is because they were not always delusional. It wasn’t their confusion or the bizarreness of their behavior but it was the look in their eyes during those moments of sanity (and those moments did exist) that my heart broke for them. Only the most hard-hearted could ignore the extreme trapped, helpless, and panicked piercing expressions that begged for help when their mouths often could not. I’ve witnessed the same scenario with schizophrenics and other psychotic disordered individuals.

I vowed suicide should I ever find myself to be heading in such a state. I’d rather die the most grotesque miserable death than experience the slow torture of a person whose own mind has betrayed him or her.

Long ago, when my body was under possession of others the only thing I had was my mind. I may not have been considered very smart but under my hood I could make a joke or go anywhere I pleased and no one heard or knew. Later, I discovered could even train my mind in such matters that I could go to college and escape so that my body would not have to return.

This past week, my own mind has betrayed me in such a way that I have gone to extremes just to cope. It comes and goes and they say it will not last but I’ve seen too much to not be overcome with such complete fear. As harrowed as my mind may be in it’s “normality”, I do hear-by declare that without my mind I do not want my body to breathe. I am not so fortunate to have someone listen to my eyes and bring me clean underwear so if there is a God then it is my hope that I am heard.