Hi,
Like others on here, I am new to this forum and thought I might introduce myself and see if anyone else has the same situation as me.
My mum has recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s after a couple of years of noticeable memory issues. The diagnosis took a while as the MRI showed no signs of AD, and also she has always suffered with severe anxiety which we’ve blamed the memory issues on. Anyway, the diagnosis is in now and we have to live with it, and the good thing is she’s on medication now which might improve things a bit.
However the problem is that she has lived on her own for the past 20 years or so (she’s 69 now), and is fiercely independent. I am an only child, and I have lived in Australia now for over 13 years and am married with a young family here (3 and 1). Therefore this has made a normally stressful situation that much harder, as I am trying to manage the fallout from the diagnosis from the other side of the world. Although I obviously want to do whatever I can to make mum’s situation better, I have mouths to feed here and have to keep the home fires burning too.
I actually came back to the UK last week to help put things in place for her (paid home help, met our (very lovely) local AS support worker, finances, accompanying her to the diagnosis etc) which helped her immensely, but I feel incredibly guilty that I can’t be there for her full time, and was very tough indeed leaving her on her own again. Luckily before all this happened we got full PoA sorted with her full blessing, and even now she’s totally happy to leave any decisions in my hands about, well, pretty much anything. I just hope this lasts.
Does anyone have any experience of this kind of situation? I can’t help feeling that this year she’s gone downhill quite considerably (I understand this is more common in less elderly patients). It’s the most helpless feeling in the world knowing you can’t be there to help her the way she protected me when I was young. Awful.
Alan
Like others on here, I am new to this forum and thought I might introduce myself and see if anyone else has the same situation as me.
My mum has recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s after a couple of years of noticeable memory issues. The diagnosis took a while as the MRI showed no signs of AD, and also she has always suffered with severe anxiety which we’ve blamed the memory issues on. Anyway, the diagnosis is in now and we have to live with it, and the good thing is she’s on medication now which might improve things a bit.
However the problem is that she has lived on her own for the past 20 years or so (she’s 69 now), and is fiercely independent. I am an only child, and I have lived in Australia now for over 13 years and am married with a young family here (3 and 1). Therefore this has made a normally stressful situation that much harder, as I am trying to manage the fallout from the diagnosis from the other side of the world. Although I obviously want to do whatever I can to make mum’s situation better, I have mouths to feed here and have to keep the home fires burning too.
I actually came back to the UK last week to help put things in place for her (paid home help, met our (very lovely) local AS support worker, finances, accompanying her to the diagnosis etc) which helped her immensely, but I feel incredibly guilty that I can’t be there for her full time, and was very tough indeed leaving her on her own again. Luckily before all this happened we got full PoA sorted with her full blessing, and even now she’s totally happy to leave any decisions in my hands about, well, pretty much anything. I just hope this lasts.
Does anyone have any experience of this kind of situation? I can’t help feeling that this year she’s gone downhill quite considerably (I understand this is more common in less elderly patients). It’s the most helpless feeling in the world knowing you can’t be there to help her the way she protected me when I was young. Awful.
Alan