I am so glad I found this forum although I am now sitting here with tears in my eyes.
My husband and I relocated from Australia to live with my 90yr old parents (well, to be precise, we came for a holiday 2+yrs ago and the wheels fell off their wagon so I never went back and my DH cleared up and came back to join me - he is my rock, and from posts I see on here I realize how lucky I am!). Dad was caring for mum whose mobility is shot - she uses a roller walker for everything now. Her memory has been of concern for at least the 2 yrs since we've been here but her GP was as much use as a chocolate tea pot and said her memory was within normal limits (ha!) when I actually wrote a note for her to give to him. She wouldn't, until this year, let me in to see the GP with her but now I have muscled in and we finally got the diagnosis on NYE. Some days I wish I wasn't an only child!
I relate to so many points on here - the social lucidity masking the nasty spitefulness to both dad and me; the rants about people interfering in her life and bullying her; the lies about what her life "was" etc etc. my own personal bugbear is the constant self talk as attention seeking - she knows it irritates us all and she can control it as it is situation specific. She cannot see that it is a huge safety issue as we have to tune out or go bonkers ourselves so we can miss a dangerous situation as she never actually asks for help just talks and talks, gets irritated if we ask if she needs help and gets angry if we don't offer help! I'm ticked off with being labelled a bully for anything I do - usually prompting to take meds or reminding that a professional will be visiting and I basically withdraw and let her get on with it - then, of course, she hops into dad, arguing about the slightest little thing. He's 90 too, poor devil!
I can't get either of them to do a LPA - I've talked about it to dad who has all his marbles but he didn't understand the concept and misunderstood the psychiatrist's attempts at explaining (I agree, she was somewhat obtuse!) that mum needs to do this now.
One battle I feel we have fought and won was the battle of the mail scammers. Mum would receive "important mail" by the bucket load from companies telling her she had won thousands and all she had yo do was order another thing from them and stay home to be there when they arrived with her cheque! The lack of understanding about how she was being scammed was just another notch in the loss of reality. If only I could get the phone scammers to stop I'd be a happy bunny!
I look forward to reading more on the forum here!
My husband and I relocated from Australia to live with my 90yr old parents (well, to be precise, we came for a holiday 2+yrs ago and the wheels fell off their wagon so I never went back and my DH cleared up and came back to join me - he is my rock, and from posts I see on here I realize how lucky I am!). Dad was caring for mum whose mobility is shot - she uses a roller walker for everything now. Her memory has been of concern for at least the 2 yrs since we've been here but her GP was as much use as a chocolate tea pot and said her memory was within normal limits (ha!) when I actually wrote a note for her to give to him. She wouldn't, until this year, let me in to see the GP with her but now I have muscled in and we finally got the diagnosis on NYE. Some days I wish I wasn't an only child!
I relate to so many points on here - the social lucidity masking the nasty spitefulness to both dad and me; the rants about people interfering in her life and bullying her; the lies about what her life "was" etc etc. my own personal bugbear is the constant self talk as attention seeking - she knows it irritates us all and she can control it as it is situation specific. She cannot see that it is a huge safety issue as we have to tune out or go bonkers ourselves so we can miss a dangerous situation as she never actually asks for help just talks and talks, gets irritated if we ask if she needs help and gets angry if we don't offer help! I'm ticked off with being labelled a bully for anything I do - usually prompting to take meds or reminding that a professional will be visiting and I basically withdraw and let her get on with it - then, of course, she hops into dad, arguing about the slightest little thing. He's 90 too, poor devil!
I can't get either of them to do a LPA - I've talked about it to dad who has all his marbles but he didn't understand the concept and misunderstood the psychiatrist's attempts at explaining (I agree, she was somewhat obtuse!) that mum needs to do this now.
One battle I feel we have fought and won was the battle of the mail scammers. Mum would receive "important mail" by the bucket load from companies telling her she had won thousands and all she had yo do was order another thing from them and stay home to be there when they arrived with her cheque! The lack of understanding about how she was being scammed was just another notch in the loss of reality. If only I could get the phone scammers to stop I'd be a happy bunny!
I look forward to reading more on the forum here!
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