My mother in law has recently been diagnosed with vascular dementia and alzheimers. She has been living alone in an extra care facility for 18 months now after we noticed a deterioration in her memory. Her home is basically a block of flats with on site staff and the residents are a mixture of able bodied and not so able people. As she has tablet controlled diabetes we have on site care staff visiting her 3 times a day to administer meds and I or my husband visit every day for an hour or so. We are the only family she has other than a sister who lives 300 miles away and visits a couple of times a year. She has been my mother in law for 17 years and always been a doting grandmother and really good friend.
I make and take her to every appointment , do her shopping, bank visits, collect medication etc and have done for around a year when it became gradually obvious she was incapable of managing it herself. My dealing with everything has been a gradual process and only as a last resort when it became unsafe or unmanageable for her to do herself. My husband works very long hours and cannot visit as often as I can so we try and make sure his visits are made up of socialising with her rather than shopping/fixing things etc
We have only received a diagnosis in the last few weeks but she is really struggling to accept it as she feels she is absolutely fine. Over the last year or so she has become steadily more angry with me (but not my husband) as she feels, understandably, that I am controlling her life. She is convinced that I have talked the doctors into her diagnosis by telling tales which aren't true about her and that I am trying to get rid of her and have her "carted off to a nut house" as she puts it. She has told the care staff and her sister the same thing and our relationship has almost completely broken down now with her getting angry with me pretty much every day for taking over.
I am at a loss how to deal with this as she would literally go without rather than ask me for help with anything. This has led to things like her attempting to walk somewhere she is unfamiliar with rather than ask me for helping figuring out a route, going without bread or milk as she didn't want o tell me it had run out etc. She even fell when we were away for a week but didn't tell us in case I had her sent off to a care home.
Sorry for the long post but any advice on how to try and rebuild our relationship would be greatly appreciated.
I make and take her to every appointment , do her shopping, bank visits, collect medication etc and have done for around a year when it became gradually obvious she was incapable of managing it herself. My dealing with everything has been a gradual process and only as a last resort when it became unsafe or unmanageable for her to do herself. My husband works very long hours and cannot visit as often as I can so we try and make sure his visits are made up of socialising with her rather than shopping/fixing things etc
We have only received a diagnosis in the last few weeks but she is really struggling to accept it as she feels she is absolutely fine. Over the last year or so she has become steadily more angry with me (but not my husband) as she feels, understandably, that I am controlling her life. She is convinced that I have talked the doctors into her diagnosis by telling tales which aren't true about her and that I am trying to get rid of her and have her "carted off to a nut house" as she puts it. She has told the care staff and her sister the same thing and our relationship has almost completely broken down now with her getting angry with me pretty much every day for taking over.
I am at a loss how to deal with this as she would literally go without rather than ask me for help with anything. This has led to things like her attempting to walk somewhere she is unfamiliar with rather than ask me for helping figuring out a route, going without bread or milk as she didn't want o tell me it had run out etc. She even fell when we were away for a week but didn't tell us in case I had her sent off to a care home.
Sorry for the long post but any advice on how to try and rebuild our relationship would be greatly appreciated.