Things have got a lot worse. I cannot sleep so I am writing to get it off my chest. I live a considerable distance from my mother who has Alzheimer’s. She lives with her husband who is considerably younger than her. When she was diagnosed he threatened to “dump” her on my doorstep." He has no patience and she often would phone me crying about him bullying her (verbally). She became aggressive to him. I know that this can be a symptom but feel the way he spoke to her exacerbated the aggression and the consequence was that she was prescribed Risperidone. There has been a marked difference in her condition - she is no longer aggressive but walks around like a “zombie” and appears highly sedated.
Her husband doesn’t shout at her anymore but is now extremely verbally aggressive to both me and my husband. Because of the distance we cannot visit frequently but stay a couple of days when we do with other family members.
There have been several unsuccessful attempts to get her into respite and day care. This included an attempt at respite with us but she became very disorientated and agitated demanding to go home. When we took her home we were shouted at by her husband and told to “go away and not come back” – I am unable to use his exact words as they were too abusive. I genuinely think that he believes that I should take over the responsibility of caring for her. I dread phoning her because I never know what his mood will be and she is often asleep anyway nowadays. Today she could hardly speak to me and I am not sure that she knows me.
I am getting a lot of pressure from him to look after her for a period of time so he can have a break to see “family.” It is actually a women friend that he plans to see. Today he started shouting at me again saying that I never do anything (which is untrue). Because of the way he rants I wonder if he has a mental illness himself.
Besides distance there are personal and health problems for us that make me staying there difficult. Also I think the request to stay is to benefit my mother’s husband and not my mother, as in her confused state she may not take kindly to me staying when he is away. Lastly, I am afraid it “sticks in the throat” to help him when he is so verbally abusive and obnoxious and seems to hold me in such contempt.
I am talking to the Social Worker tomorrow. We will see……………..
Her husband doesn’t shout at her anymore but is now extremely verbally aggressive to both me and my husband. Because of the distance we cannot visit frequently but stay a couple of days when we do with other family members.
There have been several unsuccessful attempts to get her into respite and day care. This included an attempt at respite with us but she became very disorientated and agitated demanding to go home. When we took her home we were shouted at by her husband and told to “go away and not come back” – I am unable to use his exact words as they were too abusive. I genuinely think that he believes that I should take over the responsibility of caring for her. I dread phoning her because I never know what his mood will be and she is often asleep anyway nowadays. Today she could hardly speak to me and I am not sure that she knows me.
I am getting a lot of pressure from him to look after her for a period of time so he can have a break to see “family.” It is actually a women friend that he plans to see. Today he started shouting at me again saying that I never do anything (which is untrue). Because of the way he rants I wonder if he has a mental illness himself.
Besides distance there are personal and health problems for us that make me staying there difficult. Also I think the request to stay is to benefit my mother’s husband and not my mother, as in her confused state she may not take kindly to me staying when he is away. Lastly, I am afraid it “sticks in the throat” to help him when he is so verbally abusive and obnoxious and seems to hold me in such contempt.
I am talking to the Social Worker tomorrow. We will see……………..