Here’s a rough account of mums journey, imagine there will be something you can relate to.
Mum is 88 years young, the only sibling and I’ve been looking after and assisting mum for the last 21 years since dad went and she has Alzheimer’s dementia disease (mixed type) and COPD, which was diagnosed back in March 2022, is at middle stage the consultant said.
She had a CT scan back in 2016 for something else that was going on and the results of that only came to light more recently when she had an MRI brain scan. The CT scan showed severe ageing of the brain back then and the MRI in March of last year showed extreme ageing.
Gradual decline mentally and also physically over the last two years which saw mum having two falls, one broken hip then six months later her shoulder, she was seeing dead relatives and also a couple of dogs she had back in the 60’s of which she would go looking for across the fields and calling numerous organisations and neighbours to report them missing, also seeing relatives that had passed. She thought she was clairvoyant.
Last year in September she was admitted to hospital with blood clots on her lungs, (years of smoking hadn’t helped) spent two months in hospital and was discharged via a pathway three to a temporary care home - from here there was a best interest meeting and it was decided it’d be in mums best interest to remain in care, as I have LPA it was down to me to decide, not a decision I felt comfortable making even though I knew along with what I considered poor support offered from social services I’d be unable to manage if mum went back home.
So then comes choosing a care home and also how it’s going to be funded, mum’s never been rich so no doubt much like many others in this position we have been forced to sell her family home to finance her care costs, 65 years of memories and stuff packed in that place and as that generation never threw anything away it was bursting at the seams, many a tear shed clearing it, an emotional time dealing with mums decline and the sale of her property I wouldn’t wish on anyone as it’s usually something you do when a person dies.
Roll on to today and she is fairly settled, I like to think mum’s in one of the better homes local to us, no mention of the dogs for ages or seeing relatives that have past, occasionally mentions her parents and husband but seems now after being out of her home environment she has been more settled, be that down to routine/medication/interaction/regular meals but as mentioned much better, the only thing is she’s lost interest in reading, watching TV and partaking in any activities at the home, I take her out to the local park/garden centres etc - has limited mobility due to the COPD so mainly it’s a wheelchair, but I’m failing to latch onto something that can give her a purpose or some contentment, she had started knitting but that’s gone as well.
All the residents there on the dementia floor are more advanced than mum and it saddens me that tommorow this could be her and also the guilt I feel for putting her in that enviroment yet she doesn’t seem to notice to much although some do get on her nerves and generally staff cherry pick who dines with who.
There’s one resident there who mum sits with that has the facial resemblance of one of my aunts and mum even calls her by that name and not her own - conversations are generally a jig saw one says something the other misinterprets and answers something completly different.
I visit daily all except a Saturday now, I’ve told mum I’m working but I’ve not worked since packing my job up to look after her full time in May of last year which you could say only lasted five months until mum went into hospital in the September but it did enable me to concentrate on emptying the house and selling the property of which I don’t know how I’d have coped if I hadn’t had the support of my wife and was still working.
Sorry for the long wall of text but that’s a brief account of our journey - it may help someone if only for the similarities but also helps me for having a ramble about it!
Thank you!
Mum is 88 years young, the only sibling and I’ve been looking after and assisting mum for the last 21 years since dad went and she has Alzheimer’s dementia disease (mixed type) and COPD, which was diagnosed back in March 2022, is at middle stage the consultant said.
She had a CT scan back in 2016 for something else that was going on and the results of that only came to light more recently when she had an MRI brain scan. The CT scan showed severe ageing of the brain back then and the MRI in March of last year showed extreme ageing.
Gradual decline mentally and also physically over the last two years which saw mum having two falls, one broken hip then six months later her shoulder, she was seeing dead relatives and also a couple of dogs she had back in the 60’s of which she would go looking for across the fields and calling numerous organisations and neighbours to report them missing, also seeing relatives that had passed. She thought she was clairvoyant.
Last year in September she was admitted to hospital with blood clots on her lungs, (years of smoking hadn’t helped) spent two months in hospital and was discharged via a pathway three to a temporary care home - from here there was a best interest meeting and it was decided it’d be in mums best interest to remain in care, as I have LPA it was down to me to decide, not a decision I felt comfortable making even though I knew along with what I considered poor support offered from social services I’d be unable to manage if mum went back home.
So then comes choosing a care home and also how it’s going to be funded, mum’s never been rich so no doubt much like many others in this position we have been forced to sell her family home to finance her care costs, 65 years of memories and stuff packed in that place and as that generation never threw anything away it was bursting at the seams, many a tear shed clearing it, an emotional time dealing with mums decline and the sale of her property I wouldn’t wish on anyone as it’s usually something you do when a person dies.
Roll on to today and she is fairly settled, I like to think mum’s in one of the better homes local to us, no mention of the dogs for ages or seeing relatives that have past, occasionally mentions her parents and husband but seems now after being out of her home environment she has been more settled, be that down to routine/medication/interaction/regular meals but as mentioned much better, the only thing is she’s lost interest in reading, watching TV and partaking in any activities at the home, I take her out to the local park/garden centres etc - has limited mobility due to the COPD so mainly it’s a wheelchair, but I’m failing to latch onto something that can give her a purpose or some contentment, she had started knitting but that’s gone as well.
All the residents there on the dementia floor are more advanced than mum and it saddens me that tommorow this could be her and also the guilt I feel for putting her in that enviroment yet she doesn’t seem to notice to much although some do get on her nerves and generally staff cherry pick who dines with who.
There’s one resident there who mum sits with that has the facial resemblance of one of my aunts and mum even calls her by that name and not her own - conversations are generally a jig saw one says something the other misinterprets and answers something completly different.
I visit daily all except a Saturday now, I’ve told mum I’m working but I’ve not worked since packing my job up to look after her full time in May of last year which you could say only lasted five months until mum went into hospital in the September but it did enable me to concentrate on emptying the house and selling the property of which I don’t know how I’d have coped if I hadn’t had the support of my wife and was still working.
Sorry for the long wall of text but that’s a brief account of our journey - it may help someone if only for the similarities but also helps me for having a ramble about it!
Thank you!
