"Your wife's parents' lives are in danger", my mother shouted at me as I called at the Eye and Ear Hospital where my mother had had her second cataract operation, and had spent the night. The nurses had phone me at 5 in the morning, and asked me to come quickly, as my mother seemed highly agitated.
Lin and I had a son, and my mother was now blessed with two grandchildren. Unfortunately she was never again happy. By now both her sister Ruth and Icek Cytrynowski had developed various health problems, and my mother's visits there were now far from joyous. Her other eye was now being affected by a cataract and I pleaded with her to have it operated on, presenting a convincing case that modern cataract procedures were vastly superior to the abortive one she had undergone many years ago. We started paying visits to an Ophthalmological Clinic.
As I'd help my mother into the car to take her to the clinic I was awed by what a frail mass of skin and bones my mother had become. The bones would crinkle as I held her hand.
In the early 1990s while Lin and I were holidaying we heard that Aunt Ruth had suffered a brain haemorrhage and she was recovering after a successful operation. Strangely my mother, who I thought would be quite upset, did not seem very perturbed. Nor, in fact, did she seem very worried about us going on a lengthy driving holiday. It intrigued me mildly, but I had no inkling of the dementia that had started to afflict my mother. When she gradually began to fit in more and more Yiddish and Polish words to my English-only wife, I thought it was just "a touch of senility" that was responsible.
Eventually my mother went to hospital for her second cataract operation, and it was then that something definitely seemed wrong. Although I accompanied her most of the time she spent at the hospital, on the morning she was to be discharged my mother became incoherent and started wandering about the hospital in a state of panic. The nurses rang me early in the morning. I rushed to the hospital to find my mother seemingly living in her war years, disbelieving I was her son, then warning me of threats and plots.
After assuring my mother that all was well, I took her home and she seemed to recover. After consulting with doctors I attributed her behaviour to the shock of the cataract operation and was not greatly concerned. Although my mother's vision was now perfect, she never resumed watching her television shows or reading the "New Idea" magazine that Linette had faithfully bought her every week.
I contacted our local Jewish Welfare Organisation about getting my mother some company, and kept up a steady dialogue with them. A Jewish lady paid a few visits to chat to my mother, but my mother never took to her.
As my mother chatted with my wife Lin, she would say the odd word in Polish - a language Lin did not understand. This increased, until my mother would say whole sentences in Polish. At that time we did not attribute this to anything much other than normal ageing.
One day my mother started asking me strange questions about a non-existent situation. She said that her cousin, Aunt Mala, owed her money. Then she said it was my mother who owed Aunt Mala money. That night she started wandering erratically through the house, turning lights on and off. The following day our family doctor attributed the behaviour to "a touch of dementia". Lin and I went to the local library and soon found out all about Senile Dementia and Alzheimer's. We were soon under no illusion what this "touch of dementia" was all about. Despite the pessimistic outlook we thought we would manage for quite some time. My mother was prescribed a small dose of medication, and for a while things were stable. I was still in touch with the Jewish Welfare Organisation and a District Nurse would call by daily to bathe my mother.
We modified things about the house to make it safer for my mother, washed her clothes and cooked for her. She seemed to be managing quite well.
Things took a sudden turn for the worse when my mother developed a chest infection and had to spend two weeks in hospital. The episode dramatically increased her dementia. When we took my mother home we immediately found she needed 24 hour care, which we were unable to provide. After she initially spent several weeks in respite care in a Jewish nursing home, I found permanent accommodation for her in a local nursing home, Bentleigh House Nursing Home (BHNH), only five minutes from where we lived. We visited my mother daily, soon developing a great admiration for the staff at the nursing home and how they treated my mother.