Delivering Bad News

asoto

Looking for some advice on how to have difficult conversations with someone with dementia.
My mom was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia in January. We recently moved her into an assisted living facility as she is not able to live alone safely anymore.
She is relatively young, 63, and while she definitely has some serious mental decline, she is still capable of being pretty independent. Unfortunately, she is not allowed to drive anymore, and even though she had no incidents before her license was revoked, I wouldn’t trust her to drive anymore. She is really struggling with losing her independence, especially in being able to go places without assistance. The reality is however, that she needs assistance with transportation.
There is a paratransit service in her area, and she really wants us to help her figure out how to use it. But it’s not a viable option- they require dementia patients to have a personal care assistant with them in order to travel with them and that basically makes this whole idea a moot point. We’ve just been buying time by keeping her busy and she is currently visiting some family out of state. She is determined to do this though when she gets back into town in a few days to the point of obsession- she asks hourly about when she will ride the bus, who is going to show her, making a reservation etc.
I have not yet told her that even if someone goes with her to “figure it out”/practice, that she won’t be able to ride alone. I’m afraid to! I know she’s going to have a major melt down.
Does anyone have any advice on how to have these kinds of conversations? Especially around losing independence.
Anything is appreciated.

H1235

What is her memory like. If she is going to forget the whole conversation then there is really no point in having it. I’ve had some luck putting things off. If you are forced to tell her I would blame it all on the transport service. I would go so far as to sympathize with her about how u fair it is. I guess even with that explanation she is probably going to want to know why they won’t let her ride alone and you may end up on the hook for telling them about her dementia (that she may not believe she even has). Maybe you could tell her the transportation service requires everyone from an al facility to be accompanied by someone. You may want to plan a quick escape if she gets angry and warn al staff. I hope you can figure something out.