The odds of being hit by lightening are 1 in 500,000. The odds of winning the Powerball are 1 in 292,201,338. I oughta buy lottery tickets because I just won the jackpot.

My mother has been diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia.

If you’ve spent any time reading my other essays on our experience with my father and his battle with Lewy Body you know how hard it was for me and my brother to manage his illness. We spent many nights without sleep, sitting in emergency rooms trying to explain to nurses and attendants all about this new disease and why they must treat it differently. My father’s profound fear of hospitals combined with his inability to understand what was happening to him complicated his treatment. His condition made it impossible to find him a care center able to care properly for his needs due to the extreme nature of the symptoms and their lack of exposure to the disease.

And now my Mother must walk this path. Like my father she’ll not walk it alone, but to her advantage she’ll benefit from two sons still reeling from the effects of the last battle with it. We’ve spent all of pandemic trying to shepherd her through a second bout breast cancer, fused vertebrae surgery, and now potentially a third diagnosis of breast cancer. Knowing how LBD affects the mind I’m glad most of the pandemic is behind us. I can’t imagine how hard this would be under those circumstances. But one thing I learned last time is not to look toward the past. The past is a great place to live when you reach a ripe old age, but not when you are young. You still have the capacity to mourn the loss of youth. LBD will eventually rob my mother of those memories, but for now she takes comfort in the belief it’ll be different for her. And it may be she has a different time with it. I’ll spell out how her diagnosis is different and how the progression may unfold based on her personality.

She’s aware I’m writing this and expects me to document it thoroughly with video and text and pictures. It’ll be raw and harsh and true. When you feel like screaming at me, keep in mind so do I. Dealing with LBD is a challenging and exhausting effort. Circumstances are different this time, but it always throws us a curveball. But don’t judge; you simply don’t know. That’s why I’m writing this, to help you understand this one example of how the disease plays out. Your experience will certainly be different. But don’t get dejected. You’ll need all your patience and strength to manage expectations and outcomes.

It’s been nine years since my Father passed. The skills and patience I developed while shuffling between hospitals, eating in cold cafeterias, listening to the endless drone of monitors crying out “still here” are old and rusty. I didn’t keep them oiled and full of gas. For nine years they’ve sat under an old tree in the yard, the grass welling up beneath as the seasons pass overhead. I was happy to watch them slowly melt into the earth where all those tears, all the screams and swallowed sobs, the cries for mercy and the sadness of loss became a story I tell when I have to. I saw this movie; I don’t need to see it again.

So who ordered a sequel to this movie? The last one was a real downer, for everyone I assure you. No need to repeat it, yet here we are. So settle in and let’s see what the writers had in mind for the next exciting chapter of The Body, The Brain, And The Sucker Punch.