A pattern is emerging. He likes the visitors dropping by, but when it's me, he calls me by name and immediately starts agitating for us to leave together. I seem to be a catalyst for the " leave now" chorus, making it difficult to manage my departure. Our younger son is going to visit with me whenever he can after work, so that I can escape while he distracts. It's making visiting difficult. My arriving lifts his spirits, but leaving makes him angry.
Anne, just to let you know that we face a similar scenario with Mil, on a lot of our visits and I can fully understand how difficult this is. We can walk in and find Mil belting along with a singing session or taking part in a quiz, all smiles and clearly enjoying herself, but when she see's us, often the tears start and 'Oh thank God you are here!', followed by requests to leave, to go home, along with paranoid tales of how she is being ill treated or talked about or how 'no one likes her' or 'they make me do all the work'. Both OH and I worry that sometimes, we actually cause her stress by visiting - its as though seeing us sparks vague recollections of her being elsewhere and either triggers or (on the also frequent occasions when she is already agitated) worsens the 'home' syndrome. And like you, we often have trouble leaving. I have spoken to the nurses and staff there about it, as I worry that when we go, we are leaving Mil more agitated for them to cope with. They have been quick to reassure us by saying that once we are out of sight, Mil forgets so quickly that we were even there anyway, that the upset doesn't often linger and that is comforting to know. One staff said that
if it is our familiar faces that are triggering the desire for 'home', then we need to realise that our presence would be a 'trigger', no matter what environment she is in - so even if we had her back 'home', she would still be asking for 'home', IYKWIM. And I guess that's true - when Mil asks for home, I know these days she usually means back to her childhood home in Ireland, complete with her parents and all her brothers - but I also know that even if by some miracle we could give her that, because of the dementia, she would still ask for home on a very regular basis. So, the staff advisd us to hold onto the fact that its the dementia, not us, that is the real trigger - and have also said, if it feels too intense and we feel that we are making her worse on any visit, not to feel bad about leaving after just a short time, even if its only 5 or 10 minutes. And they are also really good about helping us to go, distracting her when necessary - though I have found that the best thing is to time my visit around meal times, and leave as she is called through to the dining room - Mil likes her grub, as you know, and a call of 'Would you like to come and have your dinner?', quite often has her trotting off without a backwards glance! Perhaps if you could time your visits, in a similar way, it might make leaving at least a little easier for you - and for Rob x
The issue over the tea is frustrating. I have never known of a place where drinks - be it tea, coffee or pop - are not provided on request. And when I worked in a home, part of our duties were to make sure that every resident had a drink every two hours at least, and all drinks were recorded with us having a target amount of liquid that we had to try and encourage our residents to drink. It wasn't always easy to hit these 'targets', because we were so busy - but drinks and keeping our residents hydrated were considered so important, that it was one of the 'priorities' for us all, and we always managed it. I agree that its ridiculous to have to bring in a flask!
I think you are wise to ask for more time, Anne - its such a huge decision. Mad as it sounds, I think we were almost 'lucky' in that once Mil showed physical violence, the decision was almost made for us - we simply couldn't cope with that, not with our daughter in the house. If we had had to make that choice without that factor, it would have been much, much harder - so take your time, as much as you need. I think I will always wish that we could have kept Mil at home, I'll always regret that we couldn't - but I hope that I'll also always be sure that despite wishes and regrets, that it was the right decision, and that I can live with it. You need to be comfortable with it being the right choice for you, too.xxxxx
