My mother has dementia, it's very early stages but since I moved in a year ago to help as her carer and to take some of the load from my dad it has noticeably progressed. She insists she is getting better but there is a marked problem with her short term memory, her confidence has completely gone, she has mood swings (has even been aggressive towards me on occasion), seems to have lost her reasoning skills (or as our family calls them her logic circuits), and she has gained anxiety whenever she notices that she is having a problem with her memory that shows itself in minor panic attacks and ends with her crying and apologising for being stupid (this happens at least once a day). She has a very severe problem with her ability to concentrate as well which makes it hard to do simple things even with a list to follow.
I'm finding it hard to deal with as every time I think I have a handle on things something changes.
Today her brother died leaving her understandably upset and me upset for her. I don't seem to be upset about him dying though, which I think is because I'm having to deal with mum rather than with my own grief. I'm more than a little worried about her short term memory problems meaning that she'll forget and insist she wants to call him as he was in and out of hospital recently and she called him on a fairly regular basis. I don't know how to handle that, what to say to her. We're talking to the family who are still in the UK as we live abroad to finalise funeral arrangements and figure out flights for mum and dad and I'm sat here upset because mum is upset and worried about her forgetting he died because she sometimes forgets that other people she knew, really close friends of hers, have died within the last few years. Do you remind someone with dementia about that or not? If you do will they go through the grieving process as if it's fresh each time? I'm fairly lost with what I can do to make this better or what I might be able to do to help her remember and get through this or just how to deal with it if she does forget.
I'm finding it hard to deal with as every time I think I have a handle on things something changes.
Today her brother died leaving her understandably upset and me upset for her. I don't seem to be upset about him dying though, which I think is because I'm having to deal with mum rather than with my own grief. I'm more than a little worried about her short term memory problems meaning that she'll forget and insist she wants to call him as he was in and out of hospital recently and she called him on a fairly regular basis. I don't know how to handle that, what to say to her. We're talking to the family who are still in the UK as we live abroad to finalise funeral arrangements and figure out flights for mum and dad and I'm sat here upset because mum is upset and worried about her forgetting he died because she sometimes forgets that other people she knew, really close friends of hers, have died within the last few years. Do you remind someone with dementia about that or not? If you do will they go through the grieving process as if it's fresh each time? I'm fairly lost with what I can do to make this better or what I might be able to do to help her remember and get through this or just how to deal with it if she does forget.