Hi everyone, i am new to here and would like some advice on helping my mum with my grandma. i feel a bit of a lemon when it comes to suggestions and i think my mum is now over-whelmed with it all.
My grandma has vascula dementia, brought on by a heart attack at 50, mini stokes and high blood pressure for most of her life. and she has progressivly been getting worse as the time is going by. My mum is a child minder and has not only been looking after the children but has been going in to care for her everyday since the doctor told us what she has.
She has gone through some of the "normal" stages to start with, you know the "i cant remember what my glasses are? my bag?" and the next stage of accusing that the minded children have taken her channel changer, but the worst is at the moment, its so bad that she cant even make a cup of tea, she has been unable to cook and has had meals on wheels delivering to her for the past year, (which has now been stopped by the council to everyone.) She is now in the habbit of wandering round to my mums house, fortuanatly there are no roads to cross, but now she is doing it at least twice a day and at the weekend she walked straight past and got lost and a neighbour at the end of the road called the police to take her home (none of which she can remember even a couple of hours later) and told the police officers, when they pointed to the family picture, that we were her friends, which broke my mum's heart (she has no recolection of me any more and who i am to her, but still lets me in her home and gets in to my car which scares me)
we are all worried about her now as we are going away next week (which we booked before she started walking around) my mum feels guilty about leaving her like this but she needs a break not only from her job but from her mum too, if anyone could suggest how to get round this (we have about 3 people arranged to go and visit her every day already) we just dont want the situation like at the weekend to happen again - i'm sorry to go on but it would be nice to know how other people are dealing with this? and if they have any suggestions - thanks for listening/reading
My grandma has vascula dementia, brought on by a heart attack at 50, mini stokes and high blood pressure for most of her life. and she has progressivly been getting worse as the time is going by. My mum is a child minder and has not only been looking after the children but has been going in to care for her everyday since the doctor told us what she has.
She has gone through some of the "normal" stages to start with, you know the "i cant remember what my glasses are? my bag?" and the next stage of accusing that the minded children have taken her channel changer, but the worst is at the moment, its so bad that she cant even make a cup of tea, she has been unable to cook and has had meals on wheels delivering to her for the past year, (which has now been stopped by the council to everyone.) She is now in the habbit of wandering round to my mums house, fortuanatly there are no roads to cross, but now she is doing it at least twice a day and at the weekend she walked straight past and got lost and a neighbour at the end of the road called the police to take her home (none of which she can remember even a couple of hours later) and told the police officers, when they pointed to the family picture, that we were her friends, which broke my mum's heart (she has no recolection of me any more and who i am to her, but still lets me in her home and gets in to my car which scares me)
we are all worried about her now as we are going away next week (which we booked before she started walking around) my mum feels guilty about leaving her like this but she needs a break not only from her job but from her mum too, if anyone could suggest how to get round this (we have about 3 people arranged to go and visit her every day already) we just dont want the situation like at the weekend to happen again - i'm sorry to go on but it would be nice to know how other people are dealing with this? and if they have any suggestions - thanks for listening/reading