Losing both parents

[MollySW]

Hi all,
I am new here and this Is my first post. I came across the site after contacting the organisation about local support groups and was signposted here. My mum has recently been diagnosed with vascular dementia and we haven't been given much in the way of advice around this so I came here to find out more.
Mum had a severe stroke nearly 9 years ago, the day before my parents 50th wedding anniversary, which left her disabled and needing quite intensive home care support alongside my dad doing what he could for her too. She has a permanent supapubic catheter and has had recurring water infections which have caused confusion etc.
Her mobility has decreased over the years and the water infections increased in frequency, or at least we always thought they were water infections, but am now wondering if they were in fact, signs of dementia.
11 weeks ago my dad, who was 81, was taken poorly with fairly mild, but consistent vomiting and on admission to hospital tests discovered very advanced bowel cancer and he sadly passed away 4 weeks later. This has hit us for six as he had been so well previously and was still working part time!
Mum had a water infection the week he was taken ill and was convinced it was her dad, rather than her husband who was ill and due to the amount of care mum needs and the emotional trauma of dads illness we arranged an emergency respite place for her. Despite being treated for water infections the confusion hasn't reduced and in fact seems to have got worse and more consistent and the GP has now diagnosed her with vascular dementia. She seems to have forgotten dad completely, although has mentioned him once, and acknowledged that he had passed away but that was the only occasion.
He spent his last few days in the same nursing home as her as he wanted to spend that time together as a family rather than come home and spend his last days in a hospital bed there and it was fortunate they were able to accommodate him there, although mum spent most of the time thinking it was her dad which wasn't great. She was hospitalised due to not drinking as she was convinced they were trying to poison her and wasn't well enough to attend the funeral, not that she even realised what had gone on to be honest.
Since then she has remained really confused and whenever we visit she just randomly tells us things which are obviously not correct, such as thinking she is in Hong Kong, then a luxury b&b on the moors, and thinking that there is a woman living in her wardrobe. It's been very sad as we are grieving for our dad and not able to have her support and have almost had to pretend it's not happened when we are with her. My son also turned 18 two days before the funeral and when we visited on his birthday she got quite nasty and accused us of being bad children as we didn't believe the things she was saying, things which were obviously not correct.
We have no idea how best to manage it and are just listening to her stories and muddling through as best we can but it feels horrible and that we have lost both our parents at the same time. I'm hoping to attend a support group to get a better idea of how we can support mum, and ourselves too.
Sorry for rambling!

 

[canary]

Hello @MollySW and welcome to DTP.

Im so sorry to hear about your dad - please accept my condolences

It is hard when you suddenly realise how bad the parent with dementia actually is after the other one passes away as you are having to cope with dementia at exactly the same time as you are grieving.

Your mums presentation is typical for dementia. The invented stories are known as confabulations. It is due to the subconscious brain trying to make sense of fragments of memory by "filling in the gaps". Your mum is convinced that the things that she says are true because to her the memories seem real, even though they are actually false. Correcting her will, therefore just make her angry or upset. It is best to go along with it (unless she is distressed) and I learned to say neutral things like "really?" "well, well" and "I would have liked to have seen that" about Mums stories (some of which were quite amusing). You do need a sense of humour to deal with the truly bizarre things that are sometimes firmly believed in.

You might find this thread helpful in knowing how to deal with it
https://forum.alzheimers.org.uk/thr...n-with-the-memory-impaired.30801/#post-413710

 

[MollySW]

Thank you, that is really helpful! It's hard to know how to respond most of the time.

 

[Helly68]

Molly SW, I think sometimes you have to see visits to her as "another world" as she increasingly won't "connect" with yours.
Doubly hard with your recent bereavement, you have my sympathies.
I find an even sometimes positive tone of voice is helpful as my Mum (mid to late stage mixed dementia) responds very badly to raised voices. Over time, you learn, I am afraid, to have increasingly strange conversations. Mummy told me about horses she had seen in the corridor of her care home. I assumed she was hallucinating until I saw horses in a field, across the road, visible through a window.....

 

[canary]

Mummy told me about horses she had seen in the corridor of her care home. I assumed she was hallucinating until I saw horses in a field, across the road, visible through a window.....

And there you have the essence of confabulation - a small fragment of memory of seeing horses, turned into a completely different (false) memory by the subconscious trying to fill in the memory gaps around it.

Sometimes I could work out what triggered off mums confabulations and sometimes I had no idea, but I just accepted them.