When you have a family member with this cruel disease? Do you ever just accept it's part of life?
FIL has a diagnosis of vascular dementia and Alzheimer's. He's in his 80s and lives with MIL in their home, she's in her 70s. He's becoming more and more stubborn, refusing to eat, drink or bath frequently. Obsessing about certain things. Keeps sleeping in the day and waking at night Obsessively checking doors, windows and lights. Gets really shouty and in your face, can shove around and say really nasty things. Then gets all sad and apologetic and says he doesn't mean it. MIL has popped out before to see a friend in the next road over and he has wandered off trying to find her. Forgetting really simple things too now like grandchildren's names or where we live. The smallest thing can cause him to kick off.
Refuses to entertain a care home or carers and thoroughly denies he has a problem. Have tried a few days respite recently but they said he is "too able bodied" and the aggression is too much. But surely it's going to come to a point where he cannot stay in his own home? He cannot do anything himself and it's like she is a prisoner in her home now as she cannot leave him for fear or wandering off yet he refuses to leave the house at all.
It's so stressful and that's just me as a daughter in law. I feel sorry for him of course but if feel sorry for MIL having to live like this. And for my DH to see the decline and the way his lovely mum is treated.
It's such a cruel disease, I genuinely wouldn't wish it on my own worst enemy
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Dementia and Alzheimer's
Does it ever get easier?
Fedupandstressedout · 23/05/2023 15:17
briansgardenshed · 27/05/2023 08:13
Yes and no is the answer to that question. Mostly no - it's a cruel disease. But there are easier stages.
My Mum had it. The worst part was the stage you're in now. Leaving the house at 5am on a Sunday for GP appointments and having to be brought back by a kindly neighbour who'd noticed her waiting outside the surgery. Unplugging the appliances including the freezer. Distressed calls about "people" in the house, losing bags and money, screaming rows about how I had left her to walk home from the hospital on her own -- and so much more. She lived alone. It was truly terrible.
Eventually a bad fall, admission to hospital and from then admission to a care home. Against her wishes but for "respite" and "recovery" from her fall.
She then entered a sort of parallel world. She was happy. She was loved and fed and clean and cared for and thought she was at work or on holiday or visiting her friends or even at home, (she told me how pleased she was with the new furniture "she'd chosen". She didn't know who I was or who my son was but she told us about her lovely children (in her head I was still a child).
And it was a strange but ok period for me and for her. The care home were good.
Work with the people who have experience of this - it can make a huge difference.
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