Hello,
I'm in need of some advice and I'm not sure where to go... I've often come back to this forum over the last year or so to read posts but this is the first time I've found myself needing to post on it, so bear with me.
My Mum has been a victim of Alzheimers for a few years now, but in the last month she seems to have entered a much deeper phase of the disease.
She lives at home with my Dad, who has been her carer since the beginning. We've always said this set up won't change for as long as she's happy, but as she's becoming increasingly more confused and forgetting the basic things about her life, I can tell she's just not as happy as she used to be. She is frequently upset and agitated, crying, behaving in a manic way, misunderstanding who she is talking to in an extreme fashion, and is having quite regular periods of feeling lost, alone and unloved. This is all despite the amount of people she has in her life looking after her, including my devoted Dad.
I know this will be down to the nature of the illness too, but it's making it really difficult for her to be cared for by my Dad. He cannot seem to make her happy and she's becoming really hard to manage, to the point where he will lose his temper and run out of patience. However, he is adamant that she cannot go into a home until she's pretty much completely out of it, and although I think she will need to go into a home before this happens (for his own sanity if not anything else) she's not at the stage of a care home just yet.
So I wondered if there's any middle ground with home visits from professional carers. Are they provided by the NHS or do they have to be paid for? What are the options for this middle ground stage of care for someone with Alzheimers?
Any advice or direction would be massively appreciated...
I'm in need of some advice and I'm not sure where to go... I've often come back to this forum over the last year or so to read posts but this is the first time I've found myself needing to post on it, so bear with me.
My Mum has been a victim of Alzheimers for a few years now, but in the last month she seems to have entered a much deeper phase of the disease.
She lives at home with my Dad, who has been her carer since the beginning. We've always said this set up won't change for as long as she's happy, but as she's becoming increasingly more confused and forgetting the basic things about her life, I can tell she's just not as happy as she used to be. She is frequently upset and agitated, crying, behaving in a manic way, misunderstanding who she is talking to in an extreme fashion, and is having quite regular periods of feeling lost, alone and unloved. This is all despite the amount of people she has in her life looking after her, including my devoted Dad.
I know this will be down to the nature of the illness too, but it's making it really difficult for her to be cared for by my Dad. He cannot seem to make her happy and she's becoming really hard to manage, to the point where he will lose his temper and run out of patience. However, he is adamant that she cannot go into a home until she's pretty much completely out of it, and although I think she will need to go into a home before this happens (for his own sanity if not anything else) she's not at the stage of a care home just yet.
So I wondered if there's any middle ground with home visits from professional carers. Are they provided by the NHS or do they have to be paid for? What are the options for this middle ground stage of care for someone with Alzheimers?
Any advice or direction would be massively appreciated...