Hi everyone,
I expect a lot of you do this already, but when things started to get really serious with my Dad I began to keep a diary of everything he did. I typed it onto my PC - and now I type up after every visit.
Like most people I had terrible guilt feelings when my Dad first had to go into a home before Christmas - thinking that there must have been some alternative, and my mind played tricks on me as I remembered him just as someone with a few memory problems.
I have just re-read my dairy going back to October, and it is has really hit me that the behaviour he is displaying now was really there then too - the wandering, the incontinence, the talking incoherently to an empty chair, the not knowing who I was.
Anyway, just thought this might be a useful tip for anyone whose relatives are starting to show alarming signs - if you write everything down you might not feel so guilty once the time comes for permanent care.
C
I expect a lot of you do this already, but when things started to get really serious with my Dad I began to keep a diary of everything he did. I typed it onto my PC - and now I type up after every visit.
Like most people I had terrible guilt feelings when my Dad first had to go into a home before Christmas - thinking that there must have been some alternative, and my mind played tricks on me as I remembered him just as someone with a few memory problems.
I have just re-read my dairy going back to October, and it is has really hit me that the behaviour he is displaying now was really there then too - the wandering, the incontinence, the talking incoherently to an empty chair, the not knowing who I was.
Anyway, just thought this might be a useful tip for anyone whose relatives are starting to show alarming signs - if you write everything down you might not feel so guilty once the time comes for permanent care.
C