Christmas and dementia *vent*

[notaflyingmonkey]

This is a difficult time of year to be coping with the effects of dementia in a relative. My mum will be coming to us as usual for Christmas day, but I find it increasingly difficult to 'humour' her. I know that I am a bitch, but I really bloody hate it.

Anyone else need to vent?

Hello, I have just vented on the elderly parents chat, which I finally plucked up courage to post on today.

I am flying to the UK tomorrow, and Friday will be at my Mum's for 2 weeks. She has quite advanced dementia and my cousin (her carer, I live abroad) has just messaged to say, get ready, she thinks there's a circus in the garden today.

I'm a bitch because I don't want to go. I want to be an ostrich and run away.

So sorry. It must be heartbreaking and hard in equal measure.

Have a family member in a care home. FM has dementia + alzheimers, and has (thankfully) quite a lot of periods of clarity BUT every time we visit it's the same old story we have to reiterate of who is still alive and who is dead (upsetting for me as well as for them), and then confusion over who is coming to visit, what day it is, why they can't come to our house (fwiw, we live too far away to do an easy journey and our house is not suitable for their physical abilities). I visit when I can but it is so tiring - there is a lot of paranoia/anxiety tied to the relative's condition so they have "no friends" where they live, they "never do anything" and "they're always asking me to run things".

Ostrich is a good idea!

Oh God yes - the annual Christmas nightmare; I feel your pain!

This is the first Christmas in 8 years that we have been able to spend semi-without MIL, who has had dementia in various degrees for about 6 of those years.

Two months ago, she had to be transitioned into residential care as her condition took a massive nosedive and she became a danger to herself in a frightening number of ways.

We will take her to a pub on Christmas Eve, and then spend the first Christmas in years with my family, breathing out and having a nice day, not having to bend over backwards to accommodate an increasingly anxious, fretful and - as a consequence - often downright nasty MIL (she is a widow, and OH an only child - v. v. v. hard to do otherwise).

In all seriousness, it's soul-destroying, and the only reward a clean conscience for another year - at the expense of yet another Christmas Day of one's own...

This was me writing a couple of years back - hope this might provide some light relief...?

dementiapoetry.com/2014/12/24/night-before-christmas-repost/

Ostriches unite!