Mitzi and I were lucky enough to get to join a friend during his occupational therapy session today. The therapist was working on cognitive skills and reaction time as part of a driving evaluation. She knew Mitzi had Alzheimer’s and wanted to let her have a chance to participate in the activities. She set Mitzi up on the giant touchscreen for the object recognition part where she was to find all of the bells scattered around on the screen. I had quietly hinted that I was pretty sure Mitzi wasn’t going to be able to do this task, but the therapist said, “Oh yes, this one is really simple and I have it on one of my lowest settings.” We helped her along, but out of the 9 bells on the screen, Mitzi was only able to successfully push on 2 of them. The therapist was floored.
This is one of the hardest parts about Early Onset Alzheimer’s Disease…she doesn’t look like she should have a disease that’s so mentally crippling. But God bless Mitzi…her attitude was wonderful and she was thrilled that she got 2 of the bells. She did, however, tell me through tears afterwards that she was glad she did that test. She willingly gave up driving 2 and a half years ago because she never wanted to make any kind of mistake that would hurt anyone else. Today she said she knows “it will be a long time before I can drive again.” ????????
