Profiles in Altzheimers: Molly

This is part of my continuing series of essays on residents of the memory care community at which I work. Names have been changed.

This morning during sing-along, I was startled to hear what I thought was a flourescent light tube burning out. I looked around and realized it was actually Molly, harmonizing a flat blah'th above me. None of the residents are particularly good singers, and neither am I for that matter, but when she joined in, I noticed. The reason that it was so unusual to hear Molly singing is because Molly doesn't normally partipate in any of our activities. She prefers to get people's attention.

"Marcy! Mark! Grandma!" she'll call across the room at you. Everyone is either Marcy, Mark, or Grandma to Molly. At least at first. After about a month at the facility, I've noticed Molly has added a few new names. Now she'll call people Grandpa, Greg, or Phillip. No one working there goes by any of those names.

Once you respond to Molly, usually with a friendly "Hi Molly, my name isn't Phillip, it's Matt", she'll ask you to hold her hand. This is endearingly sweet, even though it happens roughly thirty times a day. Then she'll say one of two things. "Oh, you've got a warm hand" or "Your hand's not very warm, is it?" I have yet to find any correlation between the actual temperature of my hands and Molly's judgement. I think it may be some kind of fortune telling thing. Maybe on days when my hand is warm more times than it isn't, I should approach old problems with new solutions or something. Or maybe on days when my hand is more often cold, I should watch out for death's icy grip.

The other thing Molly will do is ask other residents if she can go home. Now, understand that everyone at the facility has some form of dementia. She asked one fellow if she could go home and he said yeah, sure she can go home. She asked him which way home is, and he said "It's three blocks east and then straight to hell."

Another time, she asked a woman if she could go home. The woman replied "You don't want to go home, you're just scared of the saurus: don't lose your pods! You can go home. Me, I was just running around last night with my ski-helper, springing keys around with my five hands. Then silence." Molly usually dismisses whatever response people give to her questions. According to the facility's nurse, Molly just wants attention. If I were her, I would worry about the saurus.

Later this afternoon, after Molly sang for the first time, we were playing a group game and she called for my attention. I said "Molly, just a minute, I'm busy." She called to me again and another resident told her "He's busy, hold your horses." Then Molly called the resident an asshole.