Hi,
We care for my 85 year old mother in law who has been diagnosed with vascular dementia, she originally moved to be near us as she had accused my husbands sister of stealing money from her bank account, we now know this is common in this disease, she has lived near us for just over twelve months and is medicated for her dementia. We have recently noticed a huge decline in her memory and now she has started accusing us of stealing her property, we are receiving daily phone calls where she is very aggressive and insists we return her hand steamer and now its the dishwasher, which is still quite obviously in her property, but she will not leave it alone. I have worked in health and social care for 29 years and I know that you should not take it personally but we both find this very wearing and stressful. She has care 6 hours a week, and the carer has told us that she has also been making comments with regard to the fact that "she knows we have access to her money because we are always on holiday and we could never afford to pay for them ourselves. She has disowned my husbands sister and if she does the same to us there will be no one to care for her at all. We have made a referral to extra care housing and have tried to move her next apt with the memory clinic forward, but other than that can anyone offer us any advice on how to deal with this? Changing the subject does not help, she reverts back straight away, my husband is very stressed and I am worried about his health as well. He has continual cold sores and looks stressed all the time.
We care for my 85 year old mother in law who has been diagnosed with vascular dementia, she originally moved to be near us as she had accused my husbands sister of stealing money from her bank account, we now know this is common in this disease, she has lived near us for just over twelve months and is medicated for her dementia. We have recently noticed a huge decline in her memory and now she has started accusing us of stealing her property, we are receiving daily phone calls where she is very aggressive and insists we return her hand steamer and now its the dishwasher, which is still quite obviously in her property, but she will not leave it alone. I have worked in health and social care for 29 years and I know that you should not take it personally but we both find this very wearing and stressful. She has care 6 hours a week, and the carer has told us that she has also been making comments with regard to the fact that "she knows we have access to her money because we are always on holiday and we could never afford to pay for them ourselves. She has disowned my husbands sister and if she does the same to us there will be no one to care for her at all. We have made a referral to extra care housing and have tried to move her next apt with the memory clinic forward, but other than that can anyone offer us any advice on how to deal with this? Changing the subject does not help, she reverts back straight away, my husband is very stressed and I am worried about his health as well. He has continual cold sores and looks stressed all the time.