My mum is asking for my dad . I picked her up this weekend as I usually do and she said she couldn’t go yet because he wasn’t here yet . I didn’t know who she was talking about so I asked her. She said she was waiting for my dad , he’s coming back from Germany that she spoke to him last night . My dad passed away 10 years this year.
My mum has only just had her memory test now and has her ct scan this week and her follow up doctor appointment after that but they the clinic have suggested that she will need 24/7 care later on after the telephone memory test , my mum didn’t know the date, month, she knew the day but I think that was a lucky guess. She knows her daughters but can get the two she least sees , she can forget their names . I asked her about her brothers names and sister , apparently now she has another sister . She is also adamant that not only did we have a brother die in infant but a sister too before us . We know this not to be true because this was never discussed and we were an open family.
The test , I would say my mum did very badly however my mum is of Italian decent and the way the questions were worded my mum didn’t understand. My mum has gone back to her native tongue to speaking Italian all the time to everyone whether they understand her or not. She looks at them oddly if they don’t reply so I make a joke of it and say to her that they are not as lucky as us to be able to speak Italian too I suppose we better tell them in English as well , and she laughs . She does the same thing everyday , she gets up around 3.30-4am she has her espresso coffee, maybe twice and she watches Gold TV. She does that until we get there or someone calls her . She only will go at our houses ( daughters , she has 4) 3 nearby , and one up north. She doesn’t want to go out , or sit outside or even in the conservatory. She has her routine. She eats when she’s hungry, sleeps when she’s tired . She could eat her dinner at 9.30 in the morning and then be in bed by 3pm maybe a bit later for that day . Sometimes she has got up thinking it’s morning and has got dressed , made the bed and gone down in her stairlift to get a coffee when one of us has seen her and told her it’s still night time not morning , so she will stay up for a bit longer until she gets tired again and goes back up. My sister found on line this massive clock and it tells you the time, Day, date, month in big letters , it’s good for people with dementia so they know when they get up all the above , it has the added bonus of being able to be changed to different nationalities. We have also fitted security cameras in the house so when we can’t be there we know she’s ok as she has got stuck sitting on the toilet and on the edge of her bed for hours . They have a facility where we can speak to her if we can’t see her.
She also has a watch device incase she’s stuck but she won’t use it . We have everything for now but only one thing that we have said , which we hope isn’t going to send her on a downward spiral. In the last week everything we have discussed or my mum has brought up regarding my dad she has forgotten it the next day . It could be anything but for now I want to focus on my dad as she is mentioning him everyday and then continually talks about it . Today my sister who moved up north phones as part of her routine with our mum to have a chat and to get my mum to take her morning tablets . My mum will either have good days where she will take the tablets , correct days too because they are in a dosset box or she will take the whole day at once and when someone else calls in the afternoon she shows you the dosset box and she’s started on the next day . Luckily for now there is a good routine where my mum knows she waits for my sister to ring . The conversation this morning was that my dad didn’t come home . She’d waited up all night . My sister didn’t want to upset her for thinking my dad had left her so she spoke to her and gently reminded her that our dad was really poorly, upto 5 years before he died and how lovingly mum had looked after him . She then said she didn’t get to say goodbye . We did , we were all there when he passed in hospital. My sister told her we were with dad and we said goodbye . Today she was with my younger sister and on taking her home my mum told her she was sad , when asked why she said because she’s on her own now . Then my sister told her he had been gone 9 years , to placate her that he hadn’t just gone . Was all this wrong ? Are we getting her to grieve over and over again every time she asks about our dad ? What can we say because our mum won’t ask once and drop the subject . I am hoping she wakes in the morning and it is gone in her memory and we haven’t upset her, it’s the last thing we ever want to do.
My mum has only just had her memory test now and has her ct scan this week and her follow up doctor appointment after that but they the clinic have suggested that she will need 24/7 care later on after the telephone memory test , my mum didn’t know the date, month, she knew the day but I think that was a lucky guess. She knows her daughters but can get the two she least sees , she can forget their names . I asked her about her brothers names and sister , apparently now she has another sister . She is also adamant that not only did we have a brother die in infant but a sister too before us . We know this not to be true because this was never discussed and we were an open family.
The test , I would say my mum did very badly however my mum is of Italian decent and the way the questions were worded my mum didn’t understand. My mum has gone back to her native tongue to speaking Italian all the time to everyone whether they understand her or not. She looks at them oddly if they don’t reply so I make a joke of it and say to her that they are not as lucky as us to be able to speak Italian too I suppose we better tell them in English as well , and she laughs . She does the same thing everyday , she gets up around 3.30-4am she has her espresso coffee, maybe twice and she watches Gold TV. She does that until we get there or someone calls her . She only will go at our houses ( daughters , she has 4) 3 nearby , and one up north. She doesn’t want to go out , or sit outside or even in the conservatory. She has her routine. She eats when she’s hungry, sleeps when she’s tired . She could eat her dinner at 9.30 in the morning and then be in bed by 3pm maybe a bit later for that day . Sometimes she has got up thinking it’s morning and has got dressed , made the bed and gone down in her stairlift to get a coffee when one of us has seen her and told her it’s still night time not morning , so she will stay up for a bit longer until she gets tired again and goes back up. My sister found on line this massive clock and it tells you the time, Day, date, month in big letters , it’s good for people with dementia so they know when they get up all the above , it has the added bonus of being able to be changed to different nationalities. We have also fitted security cameras in the house so when we can’t be there we know she’s ok as she has got stuck sitting on the toilet and on the edge of her bed for hours . They have a facility where we can speak to her if we can’t see her.
She also has a watch device incase she’s stuck but she won’t use it . We have everything for now but only one thing that we have said , which we hope isn’t going to send her on a downward spiral. In the last week everything we have discussed or my mum has brought up regarding my dad she has forgotten it the next day . It could be anything but for now I want to focus on my dad as she is mentioning him everyday and then continually talks about it . Today my sister who moved up north phones as part of her routine with our mum to have a chat and to get my mum to take her morning tablets . My mum will either have good days where she will take the tablets , correct days too because they are in a dosset box or she will take the whole day at once and when someone else calls in the afternoon she shows you the dosset box and she’s started on the next day . Luckily for now there is a good routine where my mum knows she waits for my sister to ring . The conversation this morning was that my dad didn’t come home . She’d waited up all night . My sister didn’t want to upset her for thinking my dad had left her so she spoke to her and gently reminded her that our dad was really poorly, upto 5 years before he died and how lovingly mum had looked after him . She then said she didn’t get to say goodbye . We did , we were all there when he passed in hospital. My sister told her we were with dad and we said goodbye . Today she was with my younger sister and on taking her home my mum told her she was sad , when asked why she said because she’s on her own now . Then my sister told her he had been gone 9 years , to placate her that he hadn’t just gone . Was all this wrong ? Are we getting her to grieve over and over again every time she asks about our dad ? What can we say because our mum won’t ask once and drop the subject . I am hoping she wakes in the morning and it is gone in her memory and we haven’t upset her, it’s the last thing we ever want to do.
