Dementia, a term that is used to describe a variety of symptoms associated with a decline in mental ability, severe enough to interfere with someone's daily functioning. The second most common type of dementia is called Vascular Dementia, and it occurs after the body has a stroke. According to the Alzheimer's Association, vascular dementia accounts for 10 percent of all cases of dementia. Unfortunately, among those 10 percent is my maternal grandmother.

My grandma is 74 years old; she has five children and six grandchildren. She and my grandpa live in a house only a mile away from where I live, so I have been more than fortunate to have her around a lot during my life. My grandma has always been a kind and caring woman. She enjoys the fact that almost all of her five children live in close range to her and she wants to spend as much time as she can with her grandchildren. Most memories of my childhood include my little brother, my older cousin and I spent the night at her house when our parents went out to parties, concerts, or weddings late at night. My brother and I would go to her home when our mother returned to work when I was 11. Any time spent with grandma was a good time, she had sweets for us, and she was always full of stories about the places she and grandpa had traveled to for his job, and about the friends they made during their annual vacation to Florida in October.

As the years went by though, my grandma's health began to take a turn for the worst. The summer before my sophomore year of high school, something awful happened to her foot, and in the process we found out that just like my grandpa, she had developed Type 2 Diabetes. This meant that she could not eat sweets with us like she used to because her blood sugar could spike to a dangerous level.

Also around the same time, her arthritis in her arms and in her knees started getting really bad. This made it difficult for her to drive, and eventually she had to stop driving all together and rely on my grandpa and other members of my family to drive her places.

For the next few years, as far as I knew, those were the only problems in my grandma's health. I knew that there was a history of dementia on my mom's side of the family, but I never expected it to happen to my grandma. I thought she was still too young. When I came home for winter break my senior year of college, my mom and her siblings were suddenly calling each other frequently and were talking about my grandma getting confused and forgetting things. It was in that moment that I knew my grandma was starting to develop symptoms of dementia.

It started with her constantly forgetting who my grandpa was. She would always tell us that her husband was missing, and no matter how me times we'd tell her that he wasn't missing and that he was standing right next to her, she just couldn't grasp that fact. She kept forgetting about the man who she had been married to for almost 40 years; this was the first moment that I realized just how bad her dementia could be. I could not deny it anymore, my grandma did have dementia, and it was a scary thought.

So after that, whenever I was home and around my grandparents I felt the tension building. My mom and some of her siblings were arguing over who helped my grandpa the most with grandma. It seemed like there was so much happening all at once. My younger cousins, who were only 8 and 12 at the time, had no choice but to learn what was going on with our grandma. They told me that what was happening to our grandma upset them, but I knew they couldn't be as upset as I was because I had a better understanding of what was going on. I couldn't help but feel sad for them as well.

The past year, my grandma has continued to go through more ups and downs. My family has had to help out a lot more as my grandpa has had some health problems as well and that has greatly limited his ability to care for my grandma. It has definitely been an emotional struggle for a lot of us. At the same time, it was rewarding because over time, I realized that my grandma has not forgotten about me. Every time she sees me she always calls me “her girl" and she constantly reminds everyone that she's known me since the day I was born. While it still upset me that my grandma's memories will never be the same again, this whole experience has taught me a valuable lesson; cherish the time you have with your loved ones and never take them for granted. When you're upset, think back on the good times you shared with them, and know that they will always love you.