hi thanks for that my mum is on lots of medication for depression and anxiety too ,she has a test for UTI which came back negative .so it is part of the illness i guess . I dont live with my mum but live next door so i am on hand most of the time apart from when i am at work , I just wish could have my old mum back as she no longer feels like my mum , do sometimes think she behaves selfish and that was not who my mum was. i feel as though my life is on hold i feel very mixed up angry upset guilty. does anyone else feel like me
Hi, yes I absolutely feel just like you do! So do many others on this brilliant forum - I feel much less 'alone' since discovering it & sharing & reading what others are going through.
I wrestle with my feelings all the time - I get VERY frustrated, exasperated, angry, & feel VERY guilty. I know she can't help it, it's just the dementia. I do try to deal with things nicely & calmly but it gets to the point where I'm nearly tearing my hair out with frustration! My life feels on hold too, just like you said. Then I feel guilty for even saying that!
Like you, my mum lives very close by - her bungalow backs onto our house, so I'm only a few seconds away. I work full time but only a 2 minute walk round the corner. My mum is 90 with AD (possibly Lewy Body). She has had hallucinations for the past 3-4 years, apart from all the other behaviours that go with dementia.
I'm an only child & mum has no close family left. So all the responsibility falls on me (& my husband, but he doesn't get too involved apart from doing her admin & is joint POA with me).
Every day is like 'Groundhog Day' - I go round after work, dreading what I'll find today & what mess I'll find the toilet in. She'll be wearing strange mixtures of clothes, inside out, upside down, back to front, trousers round her neck like a scarf, a dress with the neck round her waist as though it was a skirt etc. I know it doesn't really matter, but it does upset me because she was always so elegant & fashion conscious, having trained in art & fashion, now she can't see that what she's wearing is odd. I hate seeing her like that. More & more often lately she's still in pyjamas - the carer leaves me a note to say she didn't want to get dressed. She moves stuff about the house all day long & puts things in very strange places - but of course it's not her, it's "the people" who move things & spill drinks all over the carpet.
She believes her tablet dispensing machine "Mr Ding" is a real living animal & gets upset if the sunlight is too bright in his eyes, & spends hours late at night trying to get him to bed! I've made him a bed from a shoebox with a furry scarf inside & another thing to cover him up with!! But she still faffs about until 1.00am trying to "settle him down". Like a child putting teddies to bed!
I don't know how I really feel any more but she doesn't feel like my mum, but like a toddler - impossible to reason with, doing & thinking silly & odd things all the time, having outbursts & tantrums, going on & on about these flipping "people" in her bed at night & other assorted people in the house during the day, she thinks her bathroom is a sort of public toilet so she's afraid to use the towels, flannels, toothbrush etc because she thinks they belong to someone else. No amount of me reassuring her that it's HER house, everything in it belongs to her, all the clothes are hers, nobody else sleeps in her bed or uses the bathroom etc etc etc. I know I should just go along with it all but after a long day at work, day after day after day, month after month, year after year, it all gets a bit much for me & I come back home feeling completely frazzled! (& guilty of course).
Good luck & keep using the forum.