Update on Glen...Glen has continued to decline, as expected, however the rate of decline has been increasing rather dramatically. You may recall that at the end of May he had another seizure that landed him in the hospital overnight. It was determined that these seizures are now known to be more common in the more advanced stages of Early On-set Alzheimers disease. With each seizure a significant amount of functioning is lost. Sadly, I have found this to be true with Glen. Since the seizure in May, his losses have been noticed on an almost daily basis, both at home and at the Library. The few chores he was doing, stopped virtually overnight. To get him to accomplish the most simplistic tasks requires they be broken down into unbelievably simple instructions one step at a time and must be repeated several times in the course of the task. He has no short term memory whatsoever and his long term memory inaccurate at best. About 3 weeks ago, his co-workers began to notice he was having more and more difficulty at work. They noticed he could organize the books on the cart, but could not remember how to shelve the books. Last Wednesday I spoke with his boss who gave him Thursday and Friday off in hopes he would be able to relax and come back to work today and offered to cut his hours down to 2 hours per day if that would help. The four days off proved to accelerate his deterioration even quicker. He spent most of this time in bed, sometimes only getting up long enough to eat and go back to bed for hours at a time. We discussed it a couple of times over the weekend and he agreed it was time for him to retire from the Library. This morning we submitted his letter of resignation effective immediately. We are referring to it as a retirement. Everyone was so supportive and genuinely sad to see him leave. I cannot say enough about the Terrebonne Parish Library. If it hadnt been for them he would never have been able to work this long. His supervisors and co-workers have been so kind and supportive. Time and time again they went above and beyond the call of duty. Their caring and empathy are a shining example to how it should be, but rarely is. They found the most clever ways of helping him without him noticing what they were doing. Over the years as he could no longer handle many of the job duties assigned to him, his change in duties were always done in such a way that he never felt like he was being demoted or that people felt sorry for him. They always made him feel that his contributions were valuable and he was a part of the team. Mary Cosper-LeBouef you are the director of some very amazing people. You took a chance on hiring Glen and gave him the wonderful opportunity to fulfill his dream of working in a library...and he did consider this his dream job. For those of you who are near, I encourage you to come to the house anytime to visit with Glen. He may not know your name without prompting, but he will recognize that he knows your face. He will know that you are someone special in his life. You will likely have to do most of the talking to keep the conversation going, as he has great difficulty with word searching and rarely completes a simple sentence. Talking about old times and the memories you share helps him so much. Whenever he has a special friend visit, he perks up so much. Please come see him anytime.
Posted on: Mon, 28 Jul 2014 22:01:25 +0000
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