I’ll try not to be too longwinded here. My DM is late 70s, widowed. We moved countries to be near her when her partner died, and are living next door.
We’d not been here long when she had a minor heart attack. Shortly after that I discovered she’d been drinking secretly - neat vodka, from early in the morning. This was a total shock to me.
I had some hard conversations with her about this, mainly around driving. She refused to seek any help with the drinking. She will stop for a few weeks or even months at a time, and then fall off the wagon again for several weeks, then stop.
She’s recently had another acute episode of heart failure, probably triggered by starting drinking again after a long sober period.
She increasingly relies on me for things like making phone calls for her, or making small decisions she gets very stuck on. She sometimes forgets things we’ve just spoken about. And she will have these little lapses where she doesn’t understand something very basic about the world (like the weather changing with the seasons), or recognise a common household item - she was very puzzled by her lip balm the other day and asked me what it was for and how to use it.
She will also sometimes say incredibly inappropriate things - e.g. make lighthearted jokes about my child who died, or tell my hairdresser I find her annoying (😳) which is absolutely not like her as a lifelong people pleaser.
It seems clear to me that there is something going on here - whether it’s small strokes or the beginnings of alcoholic / vascular dementia or insufficient oxygen to the brain or what - but nobody else sees this except my DH. And about 80% of the time she seems to be functioning fine, just with these bizarre lapses, and an increase in fretfulness and indecision.
When I take her to appts she comes across as completely sharp and together, and makes out to the medics that I’m some kind of hysterical hypochondriac by proxy who’s determined to treat her like a frail old lady.
She will also flat out lie - telling doctors she feels fine, denying she has any symptoms at all, saying she doesn’t drink alcohol and exercises regularly with the dog (when in fact she neglects her dog and I’ve taken over much of her care).
When she was being admitted for her heart attack, she insisted to the A&E doctor that she felt fine - and she was very convincing, not breathless or in any distress at all, though her BP and heart rate were through the roof and her oxygen sats were 80.
After her usual performance at the cardiologist today, he pronounced her in great shape and only in very early / mild heart failure with a couple of leaky valves and some stiffness of the heart muscle. With some tweaks to her meds he reckons she should enjoy a good quality of life for years yet.
But I don’t know how long I can deal with this, living next door to her, while she is increasingly needy and expects to lean her life against mine. I have a young child with SEN and things are pretty complex as it is.
I don’t know what I want from this thread apart from maybe to hear others’ experiences of a parent who is more unwell than they let on, in many ways, but is likely to be in stable physical health for up to a decade, while becoming increasingly confused and difficult.
Does this sound like dementia, or the sort of cognitive decline you might expect from heart failure, or alcoholic brain damage…? I think if I had some framework for understanding it I’d feel a bit less lost.