An open letter to Insensitive Intellectual Idiots

 The peace that prevailed all these years at my home, has slowly withered away. It was my mother first and now, my father too has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. My dad’s elder sister too is a victim of Alzheimer’s. My grandma had this. So my entire family is slowly waking up to the fact that there is genetics at play. My parents’ health is deteriorating every day and unfortunately, I have no other option than to be a witness for it. Of course, I am going that extra mile to ensure their wellbeing is always a priority. I often tell myself that the most fundamental element needed to sail through this difficult time is patience. But it been easier said than done to inculcate it.

The shenanigans of this bad ailment is such that more than the patients, it directly impacts the serotonins of their family and friends who are dealing with it first-hand. I’ve been embracing my fear of losing them, their faults, their uncertainties, their immaculate behavior; all by myself. A very few close friends know about this, but this is a very challenging time for me. Consequently, there have been some lapses on my commitments. This has led to a few verbal duels with my wife. It, in fact, has gone beyond this and we can now be called a mildly battered couple, thanks to two Alzheimer’s patients at home.

Trust me, impaired cognition is not so easy to deal with, especially when you know there is no change coming in, ever. You have to deal with it as long as they are alive. The situation will only get worse over time. I am not even going into the details of my father’s auditory hallucinations. The very fact that it is irreversible is enough to weaken the dependents emotionally. On top of it, being a middle class family, there are financial and societal implications that you have to deal with. While figuring out things on all these fronts, a few duels happened. I have had regrets on the way things were going, especially with the battered couple tag **winks**, but with god’s grace, life is back to normal. Honestly, I am repentant and have come to terms with how I should not repeat it. I have learnt to cope with the situation now. But what I am not able to cope is the presence of insensitive intellectual idiots (i3s) around me who do not even know what the disease is, but lecturing me on how I should cope. Argghhhh!

Some came home, spent 10 min with my father and gave me hour long lectures on “why have we reduced the food quantity”, “why should I buy him more shirts” and “how often should I take him to barber”, “GPS based tracker for my father” and what not! One one hand, my father is finding it difficult to operate his own cell-phone and TV remote, but my uncle wants my dad to do all the ironing of clothes, so he is occupied. A married couple in their late 30s who never even dreamt of having kids are lecturing me on my son’s upbringing. The worst of them all is this: A relative of my wife, who neither knows A of Alzheimer’s nor my parents name, thinks I have lied about my parent’s condition. She has written a long message to me on WA stating that I’m trying to cover up issues with my wife by lying about my parents’ condition. And that karma will catch up with me **duh**. There are specimens who have started doing Yoga just a couple of years ago and consider themselves spiritual icons, giving me lectures on DOs and DON’Ts of my life. I wanted to tell the person that my spiritual guru has been guiding me since the time you had not even reached your puberty.

I got curious and dug deeper to understand why there are so many i3s (insensitive intellectual idiots) who cannot shut up, to say the least, if not empathize with my family. My father’s Neurologist gave me the answer. Although Alzheimer’s is highly prevalent in the west, people in India, by large, do not know about this disease. Average Indian Life span used to be 65-66 years a couple of decades ago. But due to advancement in medicine and Human Development Index going very high in the metro cities of India in the last decade, life expectancy of Indians has gone up to 75+ years. This had led to surfacing of alarming number of Alzheimer’s patients in India. In other words, very few have known & dealt with the disease in past. Suddenly there is a buzz with a lot of cases and people yet to assimilate. Doctor is confident that people will learn to deal with it, I am not!

I am at that juncture of my life where I am not at peace to tolerate such nonsense. It is a challenging time for me and I do not think of consequences when I speak/reply. My mind is currently a jumble of inaccuracies and my responses might make you very uncomfortable. How can someone say I am lying about my parents, goddammit! I know I am bad at expressing my emotions in public. But saying that I’m lying about my parents is a blaze of akhand chutiyapa. Please give your thoughts some food before being an insensitive asshole. Reform your own lives before judging somebody else’s. See if your own mother is happy before passing insensitive comments on others. Be nice to people on your way up because you’ll meet them on your way down. There are better things to look after than lecturing how many times my father must shave his beard! Don’t let me grab you by the shoulders on another blog post. Educate yourself on this degenerative disease; how it impacts the caregivers, its emotional paradigm. Empathize with the caregiver and their family and help them lead a more contented life.

If not, at least, SHUT THE F*** UP!!

Image credits: Google Images