Jude said:
Dear BJ,
This will have caused incredible distress to you in the past, but ....
This really means putting all the past hurts aside and dealing with the here and now. That means caring for them as they are today and assessing their needs on a day by day basis from this moment onwards.
It does take a quantam leap to do it, but forgetting the past can be done. Storm has proved that and I really admire her for doing so.
We have to look to the future and not into the past if we are to survive as carers in the current time.
Best wishes,
Jude
As I said, it's very difficult for me to explain, but my mother's underlying condition is NOT in the past. It's here, in the present, running alongside the dementia. Her rants and tantrums and violence are IDENTICAL to those she's had all her life, and haven't changed one iota in tone, frequency, content or length. I am ALWAYS the one she selects for this treatment, and she has always made it clear and continues to do so, that she has hated me from the moment I was born, and that she hates all women, and that only men have value in her life. From when I was 18 months to when I was 8 she made repeated efforts to drown me, holding my head under a cold water tap until I stopped breathing. She had a miscarriage when I was 18 months old, and one theory to explain her fragile mental health is that she had post-partum psychosis which was never treated.
Her psychosis also confused the professionals who deal with her. No one believed me, because they hadn't 'seen' it, but I've got used to that, as an abuse survivor. The whole point of abuse is that it's secret.
Then, in December, her new Social Worker came round when she was 'into' one of her rants, and couldn't stop herself, and went on at me for another 2 hours, in front of the SW.
The difference the dementia makes is that in the past no one witnessed these outside the family, as she was able, very successfully, to mask her condition in front of others. She is a little less able to do that now.
The rant witnessed by the SW is what I've had to deal with, continually, for 60 years.
Following that, last month, there was a crisis meeting with the SW, psychiatrist and CPN, and the SW was brilliant, because she'd been so terrified at the time, and pointed out to the psychiatrist that this WASN'T dementia, it was ongoing psychosis (SW has a background in mental health, in admissions wards of pychiatric hospitals). Until then, everyone had thought, as most here think, that it was the 'aggression' element of vascular dementia, but the part that's different apart from the fact that it's lifelong in duration is that it can't be stopped by distraction, intervention, comfort, reassurance, or any of the conventional tools. These things go on and on until they burn out in their own time, in this case 3 hours in total, until I could manage to get away.
So this is the nub of the problem. The psychiatrist and SW advised me that I'm not safe with her. But I know that anyway. I was advised to take a backseat role as her Primary carer and try to distance myself, physically, but that isn't practically possible, most of the time. The psychiatrist said that with the progression of the dementia it may be that her psychotic episodes diminish in their intensity and might even end. So I suppose that's what I'm hoping for.
The fact is that she's abused me all her life, and the abuse CONTINUES, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the dementia. My distress isn't just in my memory bank, it's part of the here and now.
In contrast to this, I find the dementia is relatively 'easy' if that's not a strange thing to say, and I suppose it must sound unacceptable to all of you, and I sincerely apologise if anyone is upset by that statement because I know that dementia is taking your dearly loved ones away in a very cruel way, and in my case paradoxically it may be giving me someone to love. The person she is with dementia is human and real and suffering, and has some insight into her problem, and I can almost feel love for her. I've never before been able to see her as another human being, as she's never been 'real', and never been a 'mother'. I can now even hug her, and calm her fears, help her through the dark days, and deal with her constant repetition and questioning without ever losing patience. Curiously, I'm now the only person in her life to whom she will openly express her fears and from whom she can accept comfort, although she can turn on me at any moment, as she always has done. And, because she now has dementia, I can share some of the issues involved in that, directly or indirectly, through the TP support system. This, most of the time, gives me a comforting feeling of inclusion which is a pretty new experience for me! Abuse survival is a fairly intense and private affair.
I hope that this may have given you some insight into the compexity of this particular case. It IS very different, and I feel almost completely alone with it, as hardly anyone understands - except now, thank God, the psychiatrist and Social Worker, who are doing their best to help.
Conventional wisdom just doesn't apply!
