Good weekend

Just Bill

Hello everyone. I find this group to be great therapy in many ways. One in particular is when I make a new discovery about how to deal with this situation I can post it here. For a long time I had to just bottle it up. No one not in our situation really gets it enough to share in your self discovery. When I post something it puts my thoughts into words and that helps me put words into action. I did some self examination and I can be a neurotic high strung continuous improvement type A pain in the butt. That trait has helped me in business and sports but as 24/7 caregiver not so much. By posting changing my mindset from aggravation to positive affirmation it sort of held me to that. As a result of my personality change she was a sweet heart the whole weekend. Not one anger episode. She still has other issues with memory, hallucinations, who, what, where and why all day. But no anger. Good weekend.

Dio

Yay! Take that as a win and savor it!!

Joydean

Agree!

Ed1937

I'm happy to see posts like this. Take that win, and hang onto it.

David J

Glad your weekend was smoother!

Stuck in the middle

Your point is well taken.  We can make life better for ourselves and our LOs by changing the way in which we interact.

My wife is a lot easier to get along with since her diagnosis of dementia.  She has changed, of course, but so have I.  I don't expect much, and I am more gentle and patient.  

Pat6177

For me, it’s about accepting that this is what is now. Prior to diagnosis, I knew he had dementia. But I didn’t accept it and continued to get impatient when he repeated himself, forgot things, screwed things up. I remember him saying to me one day “I’m doing the best I can”. I still didn’t want to fully accept the reality of the disease. Once we got the diagnosis (2 yrs ago) and it was official, my behavior shifted. It took me awhile to really figure out how to interact with this new person but I have a lot more patience now. One friend early on told me that I would have to change because he couldn’t. That pissed me off (what about me?) but I know now that it’s very true. Oftentimes, the best I can do is leave the room but that’s still better than a snarky comment.