I have been a Carer for my hubby who has vascular dementia for over 12 years. I look after him without family support and as we have moved recently without the support of friends. The few beautiful friends I have made are all Carers tied up in their own current nightmares. I personally am struggling medically. The utter unreasonable chaos of Covid has made that impossible. six cancelled appointments with consultants and now confronted by an 18 week waiting list. But leaving that there I had yesterday to deal with what I believe was another psychotic episode from my husband. He has had some before, one of which led him to a fall in which he was injured. Yesterday for some reason he believed that I had told him to go and cut an 8'conifer tree down that is growing on our rockery.
The rockery is on a steep slope and I have installed handrails around the paths it to protect him from falling. I caught him on his way to this tree with a saw in hand. Asked what he was doing he told be quite aggressively that I had told him twice to go and cut the tree down. If he had got onto the rockery, let alone to the tree he would have been badly injured. Humouring him, distracting him didn't work and ended up shouting at him to stop. All he kept saying was "You told me to. I asked you and you told me twice. I can hear your voice now." Eventually, I made him sit down but he kept repeating his story and saying he was going to do it. He is still adamant today that I told him to and I am lying.
I found this desperately upsetting and disturbing as he could have really harmed himself and me if I had tried to stop him. This blame thing is something he does, all the time but this really frightened me. I tried to get help this morning .. the GP's are busy .. the Memory Clinic is working from home .. (That's my access to his consultant.)
I feel like walking out. I have had more than enough.
Has anyone else experience of this sort of thing?? I need to know what's going on here.
The rockery is on a steep slope and I have installed handrails around the paths it to protect him from falling. I caught him on his way to this tree with a saw in hand. Asked what he was doing he told be quite aggressively that I had told him twice to go and cut the tree down. If he had got onto the rockery, let alone to the tree he would have been badly injured. Humouring him, distracting him didn't work and ended up shouting at him to stop. All he kept saying was "You told me to. I asked you and you told me twice. I can hear your voice now." Eventually, I made him sit down but he kept repeating his story and saying he was going to do it. He is still adamant today that I told him to and I am lying.
I found this desperately upsetting and disturbing as he could have really harmed himself and me if I had tried to stop him. This blame thing is something he does, all the time but this really frightened me. I tried to get help this morning .. the GP's are busy .. the Memory Clinic is working from home .. (That's my access to his consultant.)
I feel like walking out. I have had more than enough.
Has anyone else experience of this sort of thing?? I need to know what's going on here.