This disease completely dumbfounds me at times. Now I know mum has little or no short term memory but its become clear to me that the ability to lay down new memories must have also deserted her a long time ago - far further back than we ever thought.
I collected her from the CH yesterday and brought her out back to my house for lunch. We went around the local shops for an hour but she didn't seem to enjoy it very much and almost from the minute she stepped in my house she started saying that she ought to go & buy food and get on home to her house (where she hasn't lived for a year).
I reassured her over and over that she had plenty of food there and that I'd drop her home later (little white lies are easier) but when we pulled up outside the CH in the afternoon she completely didn't recognise it at all. Nothing seemed familiar to her - she's never been able to picture the CH when she's away from there but normally when you take her back she recognises it straight away. This time she didn't and insisted she didn't live there. She asked how long she'd been there and I gently told her it was a year and she placed her hed in her hands and said she couldnt ever remember being there at all.
To walk away and leave her there was like doing it for the first time all over again....
I collected her from the CH yesterday and brought her out back to my house for lunch. We went around the local shops for an hour but she didn't seem to enjoy it very much and almost from the minute she stepped in my house she started saying that she ought to go & buy food and get on home to her house (where she hasn't lived for a year).
I reassured her over and over that she had plenty of food there and that I'd drop her home later (little white lies are easier) but when we pulled up outside the CH in the afternoon she completely didn't recognise it at all. Nothing seemed familiar to her - she's never been able to picture the CH when she's away from there but normally when you take her back she recognises it straight away. This time she didn't and insisted she didn't live there. She asked how long she'd been there and I gently told her it was a year and she placed her hed in her hands and said she couldnt ever remember being there at all.
To walk away and leave her there was like doing it for the first time all over again....