I wrote this article a year ago for a university project.
When I wrote it, although my nan had Alzheimer's, she was fit, chatty and happy.
I am posting this today as my nan passed away on 16th January. However, this time last year she had escaped out of her house and made it down a dual carriageway. Of course, I didn't want her roaming around on a dual carriageway but the way Alzheimer's can change someone so much within a year can be scary.
So, I wanted to document this moment that, lets be honest, we will never forget!
It was the dullest of all Mondays. In fact, it was the first Monday of 2022. This should have been enough to foreshadow the events of the day that were to follow.
I was in my bedroom working on a university project. I was really struggling to stay focused on what I was doing. With no warning, my mum comes rushing up the stairs and opens my bedroom door. She had just come off the phone:
“The carer has just turned up to make Nan’s lunch and she is not in the house”.
This was not the distraction from my work that I was hoping for.
Instantly, my stomach dropped. It felt like a huge wave had just come crashing down and destroyed everything in its path. My mum already had her coat and shoes on so of course I joined her in this. We piled into the car, after briefly letting my dad know what was happening, and set off on the hunt for my nan.
My nan’s Alzheimer’s can lead her to do things that are completely random and this was obviously one of those moments. In fact, it was the first time she had done anything like this and it was scary.
It did not help that we lived, on a good day, a 25-minute drive from my nan’s house. To add to this absolute stress, we got stuck behind the slowest driver who seemed to be imitating a snail just for fun. Whilst we were driving, I checked the cameras we had installed in my nan’s house. I would also like to point out we had only installed them the day before. They revealed that my nan had left her house an hour ago. This meant she had been roaming the streets for a whole hour before anyone had noticed. Sometimes ignorance is bliss because when we discovered this, we instantly became more stressed, and my mum put her foot down – as much as she could.
As we drove up the hill that led into my nan’s estate, my mum thought she saw her. I got out the car and my mum drove to where she thought she had spotted her. In the meantime, I started running up the hill casing out the area by foot. As I reached the turning to my nan’s road, I still had not come across her.
My dad was stood outside my nan’s house looking around. I approached him and told him I was going to call the police. This is something my boyfriend had told me to do. It sounds ridiculous but I felt like I could not call them. One, because then it makes it too real and two because I felt as if I was wasting their time. But this was simply not the case.
As I was on the phone to them, they asked me all these different questions. Honestly, I could not for the life of me tell you what I said. When they had stopped, they told me they had a report of a small, old lady in a red or purple coat. It was then revealed that she could be in the Odeon cinema carpark. For context, my nan lives in a huge estate on a busy road that then leads onto a dual carriageway. There was no way she could have got to this Odeon without tackling all three obstacles.
I phoned my mum and told her. Luckily, she was only a five-minute drive from the carpark so headed there straight away. The sickness I felt in those 5 minutes was incomparable to anything because we still weren’t sure if it was her. My mum phoned me when she got there and told me that no one had seen my nan. I was so angry and just lost because we really thought it must have been her.
Consequently, I made my second call of the day to 999. I spoke to a different person, so it took a bit longer to find out what had happened. The police officer, who was very helpful, told me that my nan was at the Odeon and was currently with a man in a White Audi A1 and a male police officer. Honestly, no wonder she did not want to be found.
I reported this back to my mum who, moments later, found her. As my mum walked over to her, she saw my nan was wearing slippers. My nan grinned from ear to ear and started waving. It was as if nothing had happened because in her mind she had just popped out for a walk.
My mum apologised to the amazing man who had found my nan. In fact, he told us that he had a relative with Alzheimers, so he was very understanding of how the cruel the disease is. In fact, he had stopped along a duel carriageway to pick her up. It turns out there are still nice people in this world.
Once my mum had ferried my nan back to her house, we asked her where she had been planning on going. She replied:
"I just fancied a bit of fresh air".
If you don’t laugh you will cry, and it was one of those moments. My nan was safe and had fully completed her mission for fresh air, although I’m not sure I would have chosen a duel carriage way to do this.
As she tucked into her Viennese Swirl, my nan asked why we were all there. We explained, again, what she had just done. She simply told us:
"Well, I have to keep you on your feet".
Close to 40,000 people with dementia living in the UK go missing for the first time every year (University of East Anglia, 2020). For this reason, I just wanted to say that if you are ever thrown into this situation, do not be afraid to contact the police. At the time, you might feel stupid doing so and you may feel it’s not important enough. But it is. The system, in this instance, did work and we are so grateful that it returned my nan to us. Alzheimers is a cruel disease that takes your loved one away from you, it should not be something that is brushed under the carpet.
Now, I can say my nan has the fresh air she wanted. Away from the brain fog and cruel treatment of Alzheimer's Disease.
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