As well as my mum my mother-in-law also has dementia, though I don't think she's ever had a formal diagnosis. We live four hours away and my husband still works full-time so we don't get to visit that often, once every six weeks or so. I feel very much like we're the invisibles, though we don't intend to be.
My mother in law had two hip operations in her fifties (she is now 92) that didn't work well, so her mobility has always been poor, and now she can just about mange getting from her bed, to the loo and her chair. My brother in law lives and works in the same village so for the last twenty years he has been helping firstly both his parents and then when she was widowed his mother. Although he did a lot, managing the finances, doing heavy gardening, sorting out on-line groceries and visiting twice a day to check she was OK, it seemed until the last few months just about manageable. Other family members could step in when needed, and she had lots of friends that took her out and kept in contact. We took her on holiday a couple of times, and she had an old friend, widowed at the same time that she was close to and they had holidays together and trips out as well. As an ex-academic she was perfectly happy sitting in her chair reading the paper and her books. She could manage light gardening, light housework and cooking.
We noticed in the summer that she couldn't read fast enough to follow the sub-titles on a foreign language film we were watching, in November she didn't seem that engrossed in her paper and complained her eyes felt funny. When we were there at Christmas it appears that she has more or less lost the ability to read. She also has lost any sense of time, and doesn't seem to be able to prepare food for herself either. There have also been muddles surrounding dressing and she seems to be intermittently incontinent.
All this leads my husband and I to think she needs more help, and maybe would be happier in a care home. Cleaners/carers were tried a while ago but were unreliable, and she finds dealing with people she doesn't know very stressful. She is very deaf, though she doesn't realise that, and we left it too late for aids to be of use to her. From what we can gather from other family members they seem to think we soldier on as things are with the potential for a serious accident or carer breakdown for my b-I-l, rather than force her to accept help or move to a home and add to her stress and maybe cause her to die earlier than she would.
I feel that I don't really have a dog in this fight, but my MiL is one of my favourite people, who in many ways is the mother I should have had, and I want to do what is best for her. I also don't want my husband falling out with his siblings, specially his brother who I think has been amazing over the last few years, but the whole thing seems very tricky to manage without someone in the family getting hurt.
Anyone else been in a similar situation?
My mother in law had two hip operations in her fifties (she is now 92) that didn't work well, so her mobility has always been poor, and now she can just about mange getting from her bed, to the loo and her chair. My brother in law lives and works in the same village so for the last twenty years he has been helping firstly both his parents and then when she was widowed his mother. Although he did a lot, managing the finances, doing heavy gardening, sorting out on-line groceries and visiting twice a day to check she was OK, it seemed until the last few months just about manageable. Other family members could step in when needed, and she had lots of friends that took her out and kept in contact. We took her on holiday a couple of times, and she had an old friend, widowed at the same time that she was close to and they had holidays together and trips out as well. As an ex-academic she was perfectly happy sitting in her chair reading the paper and her books. She could manage light gardening, light housework and cooking.
We noticed in the summer that she couldn't read fast enough to follow the sub-titles on a foreign language film we were watching, in November she didn't seem that engrossed in her paper and complained her eyes felt funny. When we were there at Christmas it appears that she has more or less lost the ability to read. She also has lost any sense of time, and doesn't seem to be able to prepare food for herself either. There have also been muddles surrounding dressing and she seems to be intermittently incontinent.
All this leads my husband and I to think she needs more help, and maybe would be happier in a care home. Cleaners/carers were tried a while ago but were unreliable, and she finds dealing with people she doesn't know very stressful. She is very deaf, though she doesn't realise that, and we left it too late for aids to be of use to her. From what we can gather from other family members they seem to think we soldier on as things are with the potential for a serious accident or carer breakdown for my b-I-l, rather than force her to accept help or move to a home and add to her stress and maybe cause her to die earlier than she would.
I feel that I don't really have a dog in this fight, but my MiL is one of my favourite people, who in many ways is the mother I should have had, and I want to do what is best for her. I also don't want my husband falling out with his siblings, specially his brother who I think has been amazing over the last few years, but the whole thing seems very tricky to manage without someone in the family getting hurt.
Anyone else been in a similar situation?
