Just venting

My first time on this site and wish I would have looked sooner. Mixing me up with my DW father has happened several times as has thinking other family members are in the house staying with us. Asking where her family members are is a daily occurrence and I wrongly tell her they are gone to which she replies "I guess you are gone to tell me they are dead again". I am still learning (slowly) on this awful but mostly loving journey. I am the fulltime caretaker (as much as she will allow me) now but we have been married 68 years and have shared our total life together. I dread the future and am still searching for hope to extend our time. These comments are so helpful.

The best advice I have seen is to agree with what your mother thinks she sees. Do not try to say no to what she thinks she sees. It's best to just agree and play out her scenario or try to redirect. I haven't had must success with redirection but It's worth trying. I wish you the best.

Many of us have been there and often there is nothing that helps but just being there, being patient, loving her and knowing in her heart she loves you. Come and vent often, I sure did.

So sorry you are suffering through this behavior ut I experienced it also with my DW in her latter stages of the disease. Television became a problem quite often and it came into use less and less often. I finally realized that only programs that had little engagement with the audience were tolerated. Golf was one sport she watched from time to time. No dramas or talk shows as they were talking to her or about her. As she progressed, the television was almost never on because of the agitation it caused. She also experienced much of what you describe with other people, need to go somewhere, need to go "home", an appointment, etc., etc. I found that "participating" at some level with her helped. If I could relieve her immediate agitation by "calling" the other person, going to another room to find them, etc., etc. she would calm and, of course, her short term memory failing kicked in and she moved to something else. Leveraging their short term memory loss proved helpful to get through many similar episodes by going along as best I could to calm her. It worked most of the time but nothing stays the same and there were times when I just had to suffer through. Rationalizing, explaining, trying to "prove" a point, etc., etc. does not help. Try to remember that the short term memory loss can be your helper to calm her so her mind moves on to the next thing. I am sure others can offer other tricks we use and used to help our loved one and ourselves survive.

So true that not all the ideas work all of the time. This disease stretches our limits of adaptability, flexibility, creativity, patience and tolerance. The more ideas you have in your tool bag, the better your chance of finding one that helps, but nothing is guaranteed for sure. I had to try one idea after another until I found some that worked, until they did not work any longer, then back here for more ideas. Know that your loved one is not doing whatever their behavior is because they are trying to be difficult. It all makes sense in their world and we have to find the door into their world to help them for they can no longer come into ours. Good luck as you care for your loved one.

I spoke to my current home health aide and she is not available after about 6:00 pm. She is taking nursing courses. I don't know if I want to try and find someone else or not. It is someone both my mother and I know, the thought of trying to find someone else is sort of intimidating. Evenings are the worst now. It seems my mother is entering a new phase. Yesterday the wanting to go home started about 3:00 and she was really aggressive. My sister in law had to physically block the door. It took about 2 hours for her to settle down. She was disagreeable, did not want comfort or help. The dementia started about a year ago, the train was in the station. She fell and hit her head and after that it was full blown. She went from my mother to this stranger. It settled down some after that but now it's barely manageable. The form of dementia she has is vascular and someone read that the lifespan for this disease is about 5 years. Don't know how true that is.

Thanks for listening.

Sometimes you just have to appear to give-in to their demands to go somewhere. My DW had a spell where she thought she lived somewhere else, a childhood home, and needed to go home. Every effort to help her see the truth was no help. I finally got her into the car and said just give me directions and I will take you there. She gave directions for a while along a path we had driven many times to other places. Then at one point as we ventured a bit farther than completely familiar, she looked at me and said I don't know where we are, can we go home. This happened a few times and just making those drives with her directing and "in control" helped.