My mum has deteriorated so much over lockdown, I’m now so stressed it’s untrue.
I live with my husband, son (8 years old and on chemotherapy,) and my mum who has Alzheimer’s.
Lockdown appears to have accelerated the disease, as she doesn’t recognise anyone, thinks she’s been dropped off and someone will pick her up to go home, she’s become totally self centred now and I’m trying to access respite which seems impossible.
A lady from the memory clinic is trying so will wait and see.
has anyone else noticed a change in their loved ones since lockdown etc?
Blimey, I’m so sorry, that’s a lot to cope with. For what it’s worth, my grandmother was very happy when she went into a home. It turned out it had been a school and she’d been there a lot because as a kid she was a friend of the headmaster’s daughter.
As for lockdown. Yes. It’s definitely made my Mum more mithered. She doesn’t have an official diagnosis and doesn’t want one so for now we haven’t gone that route but she has a lot missing. She calls herself much muddled and is good humoured about it so at least she’s happy, which is what counts. She lives at home and we have a care team in place - my Dad had Alzheimer’s for 14 years and died in May 2019 - so there was a live in team then, with relief carers during the day, we didn’t need the live in but we did keep the day carers on. They come at night now, too.
Mum can look at a magazine but she doesn’t seem to take it in any more. She forgets that she has arthritis and isn’t very mobile and gets frustrated when, at 86 she can no longer dig potatoes. She watches TV to anchor herself in time so some of the sporting repeats have thrown her. I’m not looking forward to trying to explain two weeks of Wimbledon rehashes from over the years. It’s going to throw her completely. At the beginning of lock down they did a whole load of repeats of Gardener’s World and she kept ringing me to ask what year it was.
’I’m sure Geoff Hamilton is dead, darling? He is, isn’t he?’
‘Yes Mum.’
It’s like living in an Alan Bennett play. Sorry, shouldn’t laugh but I feel a bit more OK about doing so because she does see the funny side of it herself. I have really bad menopausal brain fog (I’d think it was early onset, myself but I’ve already had it ten years) so when Dad was alive and there were two of them to deal with it was like the blind leading the blind. She’s very cheerful but terribly bored. I phone her every day and chat to her but my lad is doing school at home and McOther is working from home as well so it’s quite hard to fit it all in. She’s 140 miles away and I drive down there and have lunch with her every Wednesday. It’s a relief that I’ve been able to start doing that again but at the same time with all the extra phone calls it’s quite hard work now.
Sorry that’s rather long and too much about me but ... you’re not alone and I hope you manage to get your mum sorted. My dad ended up in the most lovely home, so they are out there. ❤️