Mum with vd

[Lindsayks]

Hi
I am new to this forum so forgive me if I am not following protocols.

my mother is 87 and has vascular dementia diagnosed last year. She is very frail her balance is shocking but had been in very good health until this happened still living in her own house with my dad.. She is in the stage where half of her brain is ok and doesn’t understand why she is forgetting things, can’t do the things she used to do and gets very angry and aggressive with my father when he tries to help.

She is now falling all the time but refuses to use her walker and even thinks she could still babysit her 4 month old great grand daughter!

If we try to help her carry things she accuses us of taking away her independence and gets quite bolshy.

I am thinking that I need to sit her down and e plain what’s wrong appealing to her lucid side and seeing if together we can agree a way forward and how she can manage it eith signs on cupboard doors for example and using her walker. Otherwise she is just one fall away from unrecoverable injury.

All advice gratefully received!.

 

[witts1973]

Hi
I am new to this forum so forgive me if I am not following protocols.

my mother is 87 and has vascular dementia diagnosed last year. She is very frail her balance is shocking but had been in very good health until this happened still living in her own house with my dad.. She is in the stage where half of her brain is ok and doesn’t understand why she is forgetting things, can’t do the things she used to do and gets very angry and aggressive with my father when he tries to help.

She is now falling all the time but refuses to use her walker and even thinks she could still babysit her 4 month old great grand daughter!

If we try to help her carry things she accuses us of taking away her independence and gets quite bolshy.

I am thinking that I need to sit her down and e plain what’s wrong appealing to her lucid side and seeing if together we can agree a way forward and how she can manage it eith signs on cupboard doors for example and using her walker. Otherwise she is just one fall away from unrecoverable injury.

All advice gratefully received!.

That's hard,when that happened to my mum I'm afraid in her circumstance mobility went quickly she was fortunate that she was chunky enough and didn't break any bones when she kept falling,but she ended up no longer able to even shuffle,in her case that's when a hospital bed was provided for our home and I look after her along with 4 care visits a day to wash her in the morning in bed and a futher 3 pad changes through the day,a nurse said to me one day that the situation she found herself in could be a blessing for her and me as she was no longer able to hurt herself and she wouldn't go wondering in the middle of the night and get lost,it doesn't occur to her she's bed bound she is happy and safe,she has a hoist to be moved to a chair

I'm pleased that we can do this at home,that's not to say you're mum will be the same but I just wanted you to know there is a way forward if things get a lot worse

 

[Rosettastone57]

Hi
I am new to this forum so forgive me if I am not following protocols.

my mother is 87 and has vascular dementia diagnosed last year. She is very frail her balance is shocking but had been in very good health until this happened still living in her own house with my dad.. She is in the stage where half of her brain is ok and doesn’t understand why she is forgetting things, can’t do the things she used to do and gets very angry and aggressive with my father when he tries to help.

She is now falling all the time but refuses to use her walker and even thinks she could still babysit her 4 month old great grand daughter!

If we try to help her carry things she accuses us of taking away her independence and gets quite bolshy.

I am thinking that I need to sit her down and e plain what’s wrong appealing to her lucid side and seeing if together we can agree a way forward and how she can manage it eith signs on cupboard doors for example and using her walker. Otherwise she is just one fall away from unrecoverable injury.

All advice gratefully received!.

My mother-in-law was very much like this the only difference was she was living on her own. She had mixed dementia and point blank refused to use any sort of aid for walking she was a high falls risk as well. She used to try and cling to a wall in her bungalow to try to move around. She had a frame she had grab handles all assessed and installed by an occupational therapist . Of course when the occupational therapist was there she cooperated fully as soon as he was gone she point blank refused to use anything. As far as she was concerned there was nothing wrong with her and she could do everything ,the reality was that she could do little for herself.

To be honest your idea of sitting down and discussing this sort of thing with your mum may well be fruitless . In my experience with my mother-in-law if we had waited for her to see our point of view or agree with us we would have waited forever. She simply ignored any notes placed around the home or any messages she had no initiative to do anything for herself

Unfortunately in my mother-in-law's case the situation became so bad ,she was such a high falls risk and she was on her own ,that eventually she moved into full-time care.

No magic answers I'm afraid .

 

[Bunpoots]

Welcome to Dementia Talking Point @Lindsayks

Unfortunately not understanding their own limitations is normal for people with dementia. My dad thought he was fine and managing his house very well, could walk for miles and was going to drive to France (he’d stopped driving years before when he started getting lost) when actually he had several health concerns, could hardly walk to the end of his garden and definitely didn’t cook, clean or even wash without being prompted.

I never disagreed with him as that just made him grumpy and he wouldn’t have accepted anything I said which didn’t tally with his version of reality. I wonder if you might find compassionate communication useful. It’s hard to do all the time but I found it helped a lot to keep the peace. Here’s the link

https://forum.alzheimers.org.uk/threads/compassionate-communication-with-the-memory-impaired.30801/