Early stages of dementia. What helps?

[roisin]

My mum (83) is in the early stages of dementia. She lives pretty independently in a flat and I am not concerned yet about her safety. She lives nearby, we see a lot of her and I work full time, but do a lot for her (laundry, cleaning, shopping, some personal care, help with finances and life admin...) She is very calm and pretty compliant. She doesn't get argumentative and certainly not aggressive.

She is increasingly forgetful and sometimes very random and confused, more so when she is tired. She repeats the same questions often and can get worried. I create visual help sheets to help her to remember the things she struggles with. I know it's only going to get harder.

Does anyone have any useful advice or tips? I was wondering about creating a little booklet of reminders & reassurances that she could regularly flick through. Is this a good idea? Eg:
Wait for the text from the pharmacist before going to collect prescription
Ignore emails/messages from BT
...

Hiya Roisin, I remember you from the old days on MN.

I am sorry to hear your mum has developed dementia.

First of all, have you done powers of attorney for health and finance?

Things you could do to reduce anxiety:
Organise a dosette box from the pharmacy so that meds are delivered weekly (you'll need to coordinate with Mum's GP and the pharmacy)
Divert her emails to auto-redirect to yours.

Other things that could help:
Thinking of the future when more organised help might be needed, if Mum would accept a cleaner now she will likely accept others joining the 'team'.

A door camera to monitor her comings and goings. Links directly to your phone.

A booklet might be too much to remember to look through. A whiteboard in situ all the time might work.

Lots of us have experience of Alzheimers/dementia in our parents, sadly.

Google teepa snow . She’s so helpful x good luck

Thank you both.
Yes, we have POA x2 in place already.
Will look at the other tips.

We've found the Whiteboard helpful too.

Is there a Dementia Cafe nearby that she could go to? They might help to arrange lifts?

We are still adapting to my Mum being recently diagnosed. I've very quickly learned, by making a lot of mistakes, that adapting things she's already familiar with is much more likely to work, rather than trying something new, however well-intentioned or logical it seemed to me.

Eg, she has a calendar, but also makes notes on loose pieces of paper that constantly got lost...so I bought a diary that has the weekdays on one side and space for making notes on the other. In my head that made sense....but its not been touched, because it's not a natural way for her to record anything.

Getting a date/day/time clock has been good.

Getting a care package in place just for 15 mins per day...she doesn't think she needs it but it means she's already accepting of it and one day I might be able to gently say "oh wouldn't it be good if they could do X while they are here" to be able to extend the care when more is needed.

Trying to simplify things: reducing the number of bank/store cards by combining accounts; only having one tv remote (there were 3 needed before for various functions); decluttering the home so things are easier to find and there aren't 7 of the same thing spread around.

Setting myself up as the GP contact: even after the diagnosis, they were ringing her, rattling off appointment details then ringing to tell her off for non-attendence.