Hi All,
I am hoping for a bit for practical advice here. My mum (74) was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in Feb and has been put on Memantine which is great and she seems to be doing well on it. However every now and again (getting more frequent) she complain of being lonely and fed up. She gets very down in the dumps and has a low mood for a while. Apart from the Alzheimer's she is fit and healthy, fully active
She lives with my Dad, they have had a bad marriage for many years, stayed together for some unknown reason, but they have long since stopped enjoying each other company. She did not want him involved with any of the diagnosis calls or anything. He mainly sits upstairs in the study on the computer while she is downstairs watching TV. According to my Mum they barley talk. So she feels fed up and lonely a lot of the time.
I live about 70 miles away, an hour on the train, but door to door the journey is around 2 hours. I visit once a month. We text every day and I call once a week. (I often feel guilty about moving away, but thats another story for another post). On the advice of the nurse I have bought her her some word searches to help both with cognitive ability and boredom but they are not really enough. She needs more social interaction but I don't know how to help her with this. There is Dementia group near us but I doubt she would want to go, she is in very early stages so can still go places independently.
She does have friends but seems unwilling to make the first contact with them. I don't know if this is because she has lost some communication skills, or if she is just stubborn, a life long trait!
Does anyone have any ideas that might help this situation or know of anywhere I can find somewhere that I can encourage some social interaction so she stops getting so bored and lonely, its really sad to see her with such a low mood. Or even how to go about encouraging social interaction as all I seem to get is a lot of "hum I don't know about that" or a excuses for not doing something.
Thanks in advance
I am hoping for a bit for practical advice here. My mum (74) was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in Feb and has been put on Memantine which is great and she seems to be doing well on it. However every now and again (getting more frequent) she complain of being lonely and fed up. She gets very down in the dumps and has a low mood for a while. Apart from the Alzheimer's she is fit and healthy, fully active
She lives with my Dad, they have had a bad marriage for many years, stayed together for some unknown reason, but they have long since stopped enjoying each other company. She did not want him involved with any of the diagnosis calls or anything. He mainly sits upstairs in the study on the computer while she is downstairs watching TV. According to my Mum they barley talk. So she feels fed up and lonely a lot of the time.
I live about 70 miles away, an hour on the train, but door to door the journey is around 2 hours. I visit once a month. We text every day and I call once a week. (I often feel guilty about moving away, but thats another story for another post). On the advice of the nurse I have bought her her some word searches to help both with cognitive ability and boredom but they are not really enough. She needs more social interaction but I don't know how to help her with this. There is Dementia group near us but I doubt she would want to go, she is in very early stages so can still go places independently.
She does have friends but seems unwilling to make the first contact with them. I don't know if this is because she has lost some communication skills, or if she is just stubborn, a life long trait!
Does anyone have any ideas that might help this situation or know of anywhere I can find somewhere that I can encourage some social interaction so she stops getting so bored and lonely, its really sad to see her with such a low mood. Or even how to go about encouraging social interaction as all I seem to get is a lot of "hum I don't know about that" or a excuses for not doing something.
Thanks in advance