Cockroach Cafe - come and try our new sunroom

I do love the fact that we can share experiences with faecal incontinence whilst scoffing cake in our special room!

[Scoffs ginger cake and jaffa cakes]
Continence is such a breaking point. Hearing my mum on the phone yesterday in distress at her new home saying she 'just needs a little bit of help now and then, I don't need this' and relating that to the woman who managed to block her previous home's entire drainage system by putting her faeces down the basin is so difficult.

Hi all, have brought Jaffa cakes to share!

Living with my maternal grandmother the last 5 years who was diagnosed with dementia 6/7 years ago it’s been such a long slow decline that I barely noticed it, but have had to change my job and reduce my hours to fit around her. Im a nurse so it’s only when I talk to others and my partner of 18 months do I realise how much support I give and the toll it’s taken. I’m 36 living separately from my partner and whilst I love my nana to bits It can get all too much at times

We’ve had several episodes of incontinence and I finally worked out it was down to constipation overflow so now have regular meds and using pads (tena lady silhouette by far the best and accepted pads I’ve found)

@MereDintofPandiculation Thanks, just happy to have found you all!

Ooh gingercake yummy.

I like ginger cake. I'm feeling very sympathetic to everyone else joining. Please accept a hug from me 🤗

Lovely to have people to chat to. DH and I have a clear plan of management to get to the Memory Clinic appt booked for 17 December, that mostly involves call screening.

Also, I've brought sticky gingercake as my contribution!

'a whole new set of people to apologise to' is it exactly. But I have to recognise that it isn't me who's wiping up poo. Wee, yes, quite a lot, but not poo.

@PermanentTemporary I understand your concerns, dad was challenging. Care provided a whole new set of people to apologise to - thankfully they'd mostly encountered it all before!

I don't know.... the transition to paid carers isn't worry free, sometimes a stress of its own, and neither is the move to a home as we have found. We've got the threat medical possibility of dm improving significantly to the point of regaining capacity in her records. It seems vanishingly unlikely to me but I'm not a doctor (though I've read a few papers that suggest they are ignoring certain factors when they say that). But it means we take all sorts of decisions not knowing if she will approve if she gets better. I guess as long as we can explain what we've done and why, it's reasonable.

Iwaswilling I think the majority of us would say that it takes a crisis for things to change. I know that's not what you want to hear but it's hard to overcome the self delusion of "we're managing just fine as we are". I dare say there are some people who have managed a transition to paid carers but they wouldn't be pulling their hair out, awake all night with worry and posting here.

Does she have adhd?

GP told me a reason to get a proper diagnosis is that I don't get a dementia diagnosis (yet) , as there are some similar things going on. I ask because I can also forget eggs, 1.24hrs in the Instant Pot. 😁🥚

Adhd can be much worse if you're menopausal, so you'd have noticed it, depending on your age. Not diagnosed in women that often until recently and presents differently.

Hello everyone, I've been lurking for a while but decided to accept the comfy chair. I've brought posh biscuits!
My dearest DF died very recently. He was the one that officially had dementia. Now I'm at my wit's end with my mum who has always been difficult. She's struggling, more than usual. I'm sure she's got some memory issues on top of her existing personality. It's like dealing with a 4 year-old. I already have a teenager and a grumpy middle-aged partner at home on top of a full-on job. Mum seems to want me dancing around her now too. I'm on strike today and thought I'd join you lot.

Ah, I see. My DM likes to quote 'old age doesn't come by itself' as way of minimising the shows of dementia. She's the same age as the queen, who I would imagine doesn't go round the house crapping herself.

notaflyingmonkey Sorry, badly worded my post. We already have a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. I was just musing that it had been hidden in a way by her slightly scatterbrained personality - or maybe we were kidding ourselves. I think DF might have hidden a lot from us when he was alive.

Don't get your hopes up though Best. In my experience the memory clinic only really confirmed what I already knew. What it didn't do however, was trigger any help.

Welcome to the newbies. Not sure if it is time for hot chocolate or gin in the room, so I'll go for both I think.

I almost had tomorrow off, but that's not happening now. I'm planning ahead to next Sunday though when I'm due to meet an old friend who is on a brief visit to London, and have booked tickets to an exhibition. I plan on turning my phone off for the duration.

Just catching up after a few hectic weeks.
I remember DM taking us out as kids and leaving eggs boiling on the cooker - she’s always been a bit disorganised and forgetful so we weren’t sure at first that we were seeing signs of dementia or whether it was just ‘her’. Eventually I accompanied her to the doctor about something else - mobility wise - and mentioned it in passing and they referred her to the memory clinic.

Mum loves her Kindle but she has the old non touch screen type. I bought her one with a touch screen and she just couldn’t get the hang of it. I dread it breaking down.

Thank you for the welcome. It is just nice to know we are not the only ones suffering.

Hi IWasWilling if we run out of bench we just get another one in so there is always room for another. I'm a bad daughter and a bad DIL as are many others here. Always plenty of gin/chocolate/tea/cake as required.

Oops, posted on the old thread in my distraction.

Hello, can I join in? I've been signposted here by some lovely people who answered my thread about FIL breaking DH. I'm not a Bad Daughter, but I'm a Very Bad DIL and he's making us all very unhappy.