Shark Tank's Barbara Corcoran Recalls Caregiving for Her Mom with Alzheimer’s: 'Grieving in Slow Motion' (Exclusive)

• Aquarium for sharks star and real estate icon Barbara Corcoran talks about how she and her 9 siblings pulled together when their family’s matriarch, Florence, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s
• She said her brother had taken classes on Alzheimer’s care and advised them to start “acknowledging her reality” instead of correcting her.
• Although she says they were prepared for the memory loss, the family did not expect the changes in their mother’s personality

For 15 seasons, Aquarium for sharks star Barbara Corcoran has invested in 120 businesses while also managing her successful real estate agency, The Corcoran Group.

But when the cameras were off, Corcoran, along with her 9 siblings, banded together to care for her mother Florence as she battled Alzheimer’s until she died 12 years ago.

“I adored my mom. She walked on water,” Corcoran, 75, tells PEOPLE. “She has been my role model all my life.”

So it was difficult when her mom began to feel the signs of dementia.

“It’s hard to tell when it really starts, you know,” Corcoran says of the onset of Alzheimer’s, because early symptoms — like memory loss — are easily dismissed as general signs of aging.

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia, thought to account for up to 70% of the 55 million people worldwide who suffer from dementia, according to the Mayo Clinic, which estimates that 6.5 million people in the United States age 65 and older have Alzheimer’s. disease.

Although the definitive cause has yet to be determined, the National Institute on Aging says it’s “a combination of age-related changes in the brain, along with genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors.”

Barbara Corcoran with her mother Florence.

Courtesy of Barbara Corcoran

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For Corcoran, Alzheimer’s was part of her family — with all four of her uncles, her mother’s brothers, diagnosed with the disease.

“I don’t know why we were surprised, actually, what happened to her. She seemed more capable than her brothers,” she tells PEOPLE of her mother, who famously raised ten children in a two-bedroom apartment in Edgewater, New Jersey. – We thought she would get lucky.

She now speaks out to help others on their caregiving journey. “I really feel like I can help people become more aware of what’s going on,” she explains, adding that she wants to share the strategies she and her siblings used.

The personality changes that can accompany Alzheimer’s disease were “the biggest shock,” she says. “It’s grieving in slow motion.”

Here, she tells PEOPLE more about her experience as her mother’s mental health deteriorated.

Barbara Corcoran on ‘Shark Tank’.

Christopher Willard/ABC/Getty

When did you first realize that something was going on with your mother’s health? “She was in Brooklyn at my brother’s house,” says Corcoran. “She entered the room and did not recognize him. She said, ‘Who are you?’ And that scared us. We said, ‘This is more than just, she’s losing her memory. She didn’t remember where she was.’ That prompted us to take her to the doctor and see what was going on.”

What have you learned about being a caregiver for someone with Alzheimer’s disease? “My brother, Tom, took a course on how to care for an Alzheimer’s patient, which was the most intelligent thing to do,” she said. His advice to the family was profound: “We had no right to expect my mother to come into our space as we saw reality. So we stopped correcting hers.”

For example, “If she said, ‘Where’s daddy?’ We used to say, ‘Oh Mom, don’t you remember Dad died.’ But he will go through grieving again. It was horrible.” Instead, Corcoran says, “We started saying, ‘Dad’s out warming up the car.’ We began to acknowledge its reality.”

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After her siblings moved Florence to a nursing facility, at one point she thought there was a snake under her bed. “I said, ‘There is no snake.’ I looked under the bed, and the snake was getting angrier at me, and then my brother looked under the bed and said, ‘I see it, I’m going to kill it.’ We all followed his example.”

While getting into Florence’s mental space didn’t cure any of her symptoms, Corcoran says, “as loved ones, it made a big difference for us in caring for her. Because when Alzheimer’s happened, the biggest shock was that she lost most of her personality. And to walk away is, little by little, a consistent line of sadness.”

Barbara Corcoran with mom.

Courtesy of Barbara Corcoran

How has her personality changed? “She became very upset because she couldn’t be as fit as she was — you have to understand that my mother was raising 10 children in a small house. She ran the house like boot camp,” Corcoran tells PEOPLE. “She was so capable of everything she did, very confident. It seemed like she had infinite time in her life to do whatever she needed to do.”

But anxiety, says Corcoran, “wasn’t her personality. She never got upset, no matter what was going on. She could leave the room, take a breath for a minute and come back without getting upset. But that stopped happening.”

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Corcoran said that when her mother was placed in a nursing home, “she turned to another person. She screamed over and over again: ‘You don’t care about me. You don’t care about me.’ She was angry, and we simply didn’t even recognize who was in front of us.”

It seemed more extreme than what they expected from Alzheimer’s. “It was too much anger, too much frustration, too much talk and too much against my mother’s personality. So we just didn’t expect that.”

That’s why she supports RecognizeAlzheimersAgitation.com, which is for other people who care for agitated Alzheimer’s patients.

Barbara Corcoran’s parents, Florence and Edwin Corcoran.

Courtesy of Barbara Corcoran

What is the most misunderstood thing about the carer’s journey? “The caregiver’s journey, I mean, they interpret it literally: provide care. But I don’t think that’s what it’s about,” says Corcoran. “I think it’s about compassion, understanding and empathy. That’s really the most important thing, it’s more important than changing the sheets — not that we didn’t have the sheets changed — but it gives understanding and compassion for the world they live in.”

“I really think that’s a concern, just to have a world where people haven’t stolen her dignity. When you don’t agree with them, you write it off, you don’t recognize their dignity. I think that’s probably the most important part.”

For more information on Alzheimer’s dementia care and agitation, visit RecognizeAlzheimersAgitation.com.

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Source: HIS Education