January 28, 2021

"When she wakes up, if she has slept at all, she tells me about the giants carrying trees and bushes on what she calls zip lines..."

"... which I am able to identify as telephone wires. Beneath the busy giants, she explains, there is a marching band playing familiar tunes by John Philip Sousa. She is not especially impressed by either of these things, and the various children playing games in the bedroom annoy her. 'Out you go,' she says to them. Then she describes the man with no legs who spent the night lying beside her in bed. He had been mumbling in pain, but nobody would come to help him. She remembers her own pain, too. 'I could hardly move,' she says. And she can hardly move now. Her legs are stiff, her back is cracking as I lift her out of bed.... She asks me if I saw the opera. I’m not sure which opera she means; we’ve seen many over the fifty years that we’ve been married. She means the one last night in our back yard. She describes it in detail—the stage set, the costumes, the 'really amazing' lighting, the beautiful voices.... " 

From "Living with a Visionary/For more than fifty years, my wife and I shared a world. Then, as Diana’s health declined, her hallucinations became her own reality," by John Matthias in The New Yorker — a fascinating account. The woman's health problem is Parkinson's disease, and the man tries to deal with these intense hallucinations by going along with much of it, but he develops problems of his own. 

13 comments:

Freeman Hunt said...

Best COVID-related piece to date.

Yancey Ward said...

My father had the same problems the last 18 months of his life- Lewy Body Dementia. I suspect that he was having the hallucinations for a much longer period of time, but was still competent enough to know they were exactly that- hallucinations- and didn't want to alarm my mother and myself. During that last year and a half, there was no reasoning with him about the unreality of what he was seeing, so we played along without making a big deal about it when playing along was a choice. There were other times, though, where he wanted to take inappropriate and dangerous actions, and we had to stop him.

Mary Beth said...

That was depressing for everyone, including the neighbors who would probably have been quite happy to continue grocery shopping for them.

Mr Wibble said...

My grandmother suffered from dementia and eventually was bedridden towards the end of her life. Apparently right before the end she told my grandpa and aunt that there were two men sitting on the couch waiting for her. I choose to believe.

wild chicken said...

I've been around some of that and usually there is an inner logic to the delusions.

Like, my mother said my brother was plotting to kill her. But here she had become exactly what she never wanted to be, a burden on her children. So she got paranoid. Plus she'd seen too many bad movies in her life.

Narr said...


Sheesh. My mother and I sat in the living room with my aunt Helen (ma's bro's widow), out of the loony-bin for a day, listening politely while she calmly explained that she knew everyone was trying to kill her, including us. It wasn't as awkward as you might think-- we knew she was harmlessly nuts.

Then, my mother in her last years suffered hallucinations--little people hiding under the furniture; visits from nurses and doctors that never happened; eventually she took to asking which of the attendants was working that day. It was only ever my brother, who lived there--when I told her it was always him she wouldn't believe me--he was OK but that other guy was a real jerk.

Narr
I could fill books with senile Oma stories

William said...

I looked up Parkinson's Disease. One of the entries said that the disease doesn't affect longevity, but many so afflicted commit suicide or die as the result of falls. At that point I decided that I had learned all I wanted to learn about Parkinson's Disease. The neurologist said that at my age the disease progresses slowly and that I'll probably die of something else before it becomes too severe. So that's the bright side of COVID or cancer....I wouldn't mind hallucinations. They'd lend some color and excitement to my otherwise bland existence. They should research ways to give those who are prone to hallucinations, more cheerful hallucinations--something like a Disney cartoon rather than Nightmare on Elm Street.

mockturtle said...

My husband had similar hallucinations with his Lewy Body Dementia but they didn't warrant an article in The New Yorker.

stephen cooper said...

William, if it makes you feel better, I have always imagined you as one of the more inspired and awake people who comment here. I never associated you with blandness.

I kind of wish you had insulted me a few times, like so many people here have done, so that you would realize that I really mean it.

stephen cooper said...

mockturtle - sorry about your husband. That is a tough disease.

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

Wish I hadn't read that. Mrs. NorthOfTheOneOhOne is a likely candidate for Parkinson's (family history, plus she has RLS which is a marker for Parkinson's). She doesn't have visions, but has very vivid dreams and talks in her sleep a lot. Hope this is not her future.

Flat Tire said...

So sad to know how many of you have been through this. The last few years of caring for my mother left me with a detailed plan to end my own life as soon as she was gone so I would never put my kids through that. It got put off because her estate was such a mess that I didn't want to leave that too. Finally talking honestly with my kids about it all which feels really good.

MartieD said...

My father-in-law’s delusions were usually grounded in some truth. He told his nurse that he had been the head of R&D at John Deere. In truth, he was an engineer and executive at one of the American automakers. He really loved his John Deere tractor though! I miss him dearly.