“He’s 67. It started in 2018. He fell and hit the back of his head without telling anyone. He started getting lost while driving. We took him to a neurologist. The test indicated mild cognitive impairment. About two years later, he had advanced from mild to moderate. He was diagnosed with dementia with Lewy bodies.

“It’s in the beginning stages. He can still dress. He can eat. His humor is intact. The long-term memory is there, but short-term memory is not.

“He lives with me now. We’re not using the word caregiver anymore. The literature says that we’re care partners. It’s a less intrusive term for me. I mean, he’s my brother. That’s what siblings do. That’s what families do. We care for each other. It can be hard at times. But he’s not a burden.

“In a situation like this, you need a tribe, and we have that. His daughters are stepping up. My sisters are stepping up. They give me respite often. It gives me time to regroup. And I have a church family that carries me, too. I’m an elder at the church, and we care for each other. Sometimes I cry during the sermon because it really hits home.

“I know that I need to be kind to my brother. I need to show patience when he can’t think of a word, and try not to finish sentences for him. Or if he’s moody and says something sarcastic, it’s important not to take it personally.

“It’s not always a pretty picture. But my advice to anyone going through this with a loved one is to be intentional and treat that person with dignity and respect. The inexact science of this illness doesn’t assure anything. So while you have the time, while the memory is intact, make the most of it. Create new memories as you go through the journey together.”

— Natalia Guzman

(Note: Natalia Guzman’s brother, Jerry, passed away in November 2022.)

Related:

• She goes the extra mile to help family

• Teacher helps break language barrier

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“It was the summer of 2015. We were all living in Florida when my sister and mother went back to our home country of Trinidad for vacation. My dad also got sent there to work, so I was home alone.

“I was never very good at answering my phone. I don’t know if he called me or not. But then there was a knock on the door sometime in the evening. My half-sister showed up, and she was very distraught and crying. I thought, what happened? It was the day before my dad was going to show up back in Florida. So I wondered, did his plane crash or something? I assumed the worst. But I guess it was a different worst.

“She told me that my little sister was out at the beach and got caught by the current. She drowned. The Coast Guard and lifeguards were looking for her. There were helicopters searching in the night, but they couldn’t find her.

“The next morning I talked to my dad, and he said they found her body. I asked if she was alive. But even though I asked, I knew she wouldn’t have survived because she had been in the water for hours. So I flew down to Trinidad for the funeral, and then I went back to Florida.

“My mother is somewhere in Houston now, but we had a bit of a falling out. After she and my father got divorced, I still talked to her because I still loved her. But then she blamed me for my sister’s death, even though I had nothing to do with it.

“My mother never wanted to come to America. The reason she came here was, one, because of my education. She said if she didn’t come to America because of me, then she wouldn’t have gone back down to Trinidad on vacation and this horrible thing wouldn’t have happened. My sister wouldn’t have died.

“After that, I stopped talking to her. If that was the way she was going to act, then I didn’t need that discouragement in my life.”

— Obed Chattergoon

Related:

• Trinidad native excited to explore his new home

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“I married a man who was a descendant of the pioneering Wooster family. The Woosters came to this area in the pre-Humble Oil days and settled over on the west side of town where Baytown Nature Center is today.

“My husband was an only child. This week marks the two-year anniversary of his death. I didn’t know that pneumonia still killed people, but it does. We were married almost 18 years.

“Two years before he died, both my sister and my mother died suddenly and unexpectedly. I always thought I knew how my life was going to go, what the plan was. Nope. Now I’m sitting up, taking note and thinking, OK, let’s just see where things go from here. That’s all you can do.”

— Barb Wooster

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“This is my brother. He’s 3. I also have a younger brother who’s 1. We like to put little girls clothes on him.”

What does he think about that?
“He likes it.”

What else have you been doing this summer?
“I love to clean. When I’m mad, I clean. I don’t really know why.”

— Big sister

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“I was doing my EMT clinical training with the City of Baytown, and we were at the ambulance center. It was a calm Sunday when we got a call about a rollover accident. It was a possible fatality. When we arrived at the scene, we saw that the body had been ejected about 40 feet from the vehicle. There were a lot of people gathered, and I noticed my brother-in-law and several others I recognized since I was raised in the city. It turned out that the victim was my sister.

“She had a fractured knee, she broke her back and she had a pretty bad skull fracture. I told my paramedic, ‘That’s my sister.’ He’s like, ‘I don’t think she’s going to make it. They called Life Flight, and they’re on the way.’ We met them at Hermann Hospital, and they let me be in the surgery room with her.

“Thanks to God, she survived. As she was recovering, I acted as her nurse. She tells me to this day, ‘You were my angel that day. If it wasn’t for you, I don’t think I would have lived. I knew you were there, so I knew you were going to take care of me.’

“This was in 1999. I was a student at the time. But after that, with all the tragedies I had seen, I decided I did not want to become a doctor. So I became an engineer instead. But I still teach CPR, first aid and AED (automated external defibrillator) on the side. I guess I still have it in me. I love to help people. I feel like if I can help at least one person, then it makes me a better person.”

The post ‘Angel’ helps her sister recover from accident appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“I have two sisters, two brothers-in-law, two nieces and one nephew. I’m the baby among my sisters, and I’m spoiled. I get everything I want.”

What’s an example of something you got?
“I asked for a ‘65 Shelby Mustang. Well, I didn’t get that, but I did get a 2014 Mustang. It was a birthday present last year. Even though my birthday’s in November, I got it in August. It’s pretty cool. I ended my senior year (at Sterling High School) with a brand new car.”

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