Visiting my DW in Memory care home.

ChrisVoorhis

I haven’t written 9 months, thats when i put my DW in memory care. That was the most difficult thing i have ever had to do. We have been married for 51 years and were joined at the hip, so in love all this time. She has has Alzheimer’s for 13 years now and for the last 4 years i have made sure that she had friends around her 5 days a week, paying them to do work but really to help her have something to do as she became worse. I was also here every day all day and night to care for her but her friends helped relieve some of the stress. As things continued to progress we (her daughter and I) were no longer able to care for her and she rarely remembered who i was. Also she didnt know who her daughter was for the last 2 years. 

It just about killed me to put her in MC, what was i going to do w/o her and now giving up caring for her, i realized i had to do it for her and me. Of course until she acclimated she didnt understand what was happening, something was off but she didnt know what. She tried to leave the MC place several times even calling me or her daughter to come help them get her to go back. Sheri, her daughter wouldnt let me go because she was afraid i would bring her back home. It was traumatic to say the least. No one could go see her for the first 3-4 months, then it was ok to go. Sheri went to visit and my DW didnt recognize her but felt something familar and they started doing a few things there as time went on. Sheri says Carol, my DW, doesnt recognize her and is much more advanced than at first. Carol isnt able to understand utensils and can rarely speak more than 1-2 words at a time. Carols best friend started going to see her after 6 months and Carol doesnt recognize her either but likes the visits. Her girlfriend says it is very difficult to see her in this state and hard to get Carol to do something especially since she cant find the words to have a conversation. Carols friend says she is seeing Carol for me. She knows how close we were and how much letting Carol go has taken out of me, so she goes to kindly keep me up to date on good things happening. She is careful not to bring up negative things that hurt. BTW Sheri lives an hour away so she drives up every week to see Carol. Additionally in the beginnign i had to have a friend who was a nurse be the on call person for th MC home to call because i could not deal with the emotional trauma for the first 3-4 months. Now Sheri is the #1 to call person. 

This leads to me. I have yet to see Carol and our daughter seems to think it would be good for me to go see her. I love Carol more than anything and this scares me. I feel like i am just now barely able to emotionally handle life w/o her after 51 years of being together. I have many friends who are supporting me but they do not replace the love of my life, Carol. I feel at time a little guilty i havent gone yet and at the same time i spent my whole life caring for Carol thru one traumatic event after another, we lost our only son at age 14. One day he went to school that afternoon he was dead. Had a heart defect we never knew about. She had an abusive mother and suffered her whole life from that trauma. She is a wonderful woman but that woman is gone now. I spend all our saved money taking care of her $10,000 a month plus meds and i have been retired for 6 years now, i am 74. I feel that going to see her will not matter to her because she forgets the visit after about 15 min. Sheri says when they visit if Carol goes to the bathroom when she comes out she often asks, oh hi when did you get here! However i feel that going to see her will be like leaving her all over again for me! Its taken me 9 months to be able to cope w/o crying every night. I hate being in my house alone, call friends regularly to go do something cause i dont want to be her alone, invite friends to come visit for company. I am afraid to start all over again, dont think i have the strength but Sheri feels it will make me feel better. I realize each case is different but how domi know what to do. ? 

Chris

toolbeltexpert

Chris so much of what you have written resonates with me. Every time I leave my dw and I visit every day, is like death by departure. I leave and feel so sick. It is getting better though some days are really hard. She asked me this morning where I was the last month, I am not sure if she just can't use the right term or just lost track of time. My cost are a lot less,  so far the highest level of care is 4100 we are at level 1 3659 a month.

I am 66 and starting over is hard to do. I need to begin again, social life has been non existent except for my church family, which has been there for me since I placed dw last August. We are on very similar paths. Placement nearly killed me seriously I took a nose dive for about 10 days then rock bottom for a long while, now I am making my way out of the deep hole and light is beginning  to shine again. Dementia really does try to take the caregivers life. We all handle our losses differently and we are all doing the best we can. Keep posting Chris. I find it helps tremendously to just put it in words and sometimes I just hit cancel because I hear what I need when I write.

Stewart

Ed1937

Chris, I understand where you're coming from. I lost my wife 3 weeks after placement, but it was not from dementia. It was an unexpected death due to gastrointestinal bleed. I only saw her the first day she was admitted to MC because I was giving her time to adjust. But I was with her when she died, as were our kids. It was hard. Today marks 8 months since she passed, and I still have my bad days grieving the loss. We were married for 64 1/2 years. For me, the pain was/is much worse than anything I experienced during my caregiving days. Like a lot of people dealing with dementia, you are grieving, even though your wife is still living. 

If you were to visit her, do you think it would be a setback for you that would threaten your health? If you didn't visit, and she passed, would it affect your health because you didn't visit when you had the chance? There are a lot of hard questions, but I don't think anyone can answer them for you. I wish you the best when you figure out what to do.  I'm sorry it's so hard.