F.Spiva Jr. CDT MDT CD
The Denture Pro.
Every ten minutes someone is born, someone dies, and someone has a new reality. That reality happens because they don't remember the previous ten minutes, at least those with special health issues don't remember.
The most common reason a person begins a new reality every ten minutes, is due to the disease called Alzheimer's. As that terrible memory robbing disease progresses, the person affected by it reaches a point in time when they live life ten minutes at a time. During that short ten minute life span they have all the same feelings they had when life was hours, day's, months and years at a time. They enjoy discussing everyday happenings about family, friends and general events. They enjoy discussing their reality, and their interests, concerns and opinions are as valid as any time in their past, and that is their reality.
If you have a special loved one, family member or friend who is living life ten minutes at a time, are you helping them live that ten minutes to the fullest? All to often family and friends develop an indifferent attitude towards the person with Alzheimer's. They to often see the person as mentally damaged to the point that they don't deserve having their ten minutes of reality taken seriously. They will often just isolate them from conversations and ignore them at family or group gatherings.
Do you have a loved one, family member or friend you have grown to ignore due to their Alzheimer's? Do you dismiss their desire to be part of a conversation or have an ability to express an opinion? Have you limited your contact with them? Have you actually stopped seeing them at all? Do you not realize that by limiting your contact with them your actually assisting the Alzheimer disease, helping it to advance more quickly?
While there is no known cure for Alzheimer's, stimulating the brain helps slow it's progress. You can be the stimulation that keeps the disease at bay for an additional week, a month or possibly a year. "Or"..you can be indifferent and ignore the person and possibly assist the quicker onset of the memory loss.
When you get frustrated over answering the same question more than once in ten minutes, remember, it's a different time span to them , I suspect you get frustrated at hearing the same story more than once, and I suspect that you get frustrated at hearing an opinion that doesn't quite make sense (even though you have no doubt had some of your own opinions become suspect at times). Let me ask you this, how would they treat you were the circumstances reversed? Would they make your ten minutes of reality special and a quality experience?
Now go and live your life, enjoy every Ten Minutes you are privileged to live it disease free.....and if you find you can spare ten minutes to make someone else's ten minutes special, I hope you will, it can be a life time experience for them. Don't suddenly find yourself wishing you had taken that short ten minutes to be with that person regardless of their inability to recall you were their...Don't suddenly find yourself reading their obituary and unable to recall your last visit with them.
How many "Ten Minutes" did they give you in their life time? How many "Ten Minutes" did they spend listening to your troubles? How many "Ten Minutes" did they sit by your bed side when you had health issues? How many "Ten Minutes" did they spend with you because YOU was simply important to them?
The short time it took you to read this could be a Life Time experience for someone who needs your love and caring, can you spare Ten Minutes?
