Snapshot 4: Dementia = Loss of Mind
I have just read someone's definition of De-mentia as Loss of Mind.
Mum is pretty predictable in that she doesn't deal with departure well. A dear friend left after a week of holiday here - left at 7:15 a.m. and by mid-afternoon Mum was in full Dementia Flight.
Really tough. You know, I can't deal with this. I can handle the physical stuff no problem, showering her, cleaning the loo to keep it fresh, dumping the endless tidbits of tissue and loo paper that make up her obsessive need to keep her disposable pants dry.
But the Dementia (loss of mind), now I am not adapting to this at all well. Hubby too, it does his head in.
Here is a brief interlude into our Dementia Encounters.
Mum seems to be losing her ability to understand how to eat. By this I mean the getting food off the plate and into her mouth. For lunch we ate crab sticks (bought for her because she loves them, but she doesn't know that), cheese, a slice of bread. So pretty simple to 'understand'. Crab sticks are finger food. Cheese goes on bread and into mouth. Her IQ just doesn't stretch to that. Non comprendo. "What is this? How do I do it?" Endless puzzled looks and shrugging of shoulders. Little food being eaten. So I cut the bread into cubes and put a little bit of cheese on each piece of bread. I cut up the crab sticks. Eventually it got eaten, but she clearly felt I was pulling a fast one on her. Martian food perhaps?
Tonight for supper I tried finger food. Tiny cubes of bread, each one spread with something tasty. Cream cheese, humous, pate. And a bowl of luscious fruit salad - which she adores. We live in France so the fruit is all fresh: quartered apricots, halved strawberries, melon, pineapple chunks, kiwi slices, whole stoned cherries, topped off with creme fraiche. It looked simple: a plate of finger food and a bowl of fruit salad.
We have had enough Dementia for today, so ate on our own and I let her make her own way with supper. Oh my! I saw fruit salad juice on the plate, and found pieces of bread and pate floating in the fruit salad bowl as she had left the juice.
I am not feeling too flexible right now so asked her why she put her pate in the fruit salad. Quick as a flash and twice as fluent she replied: "Because I like it that way." When she feels criticised, she can answer in full sentences without thought. It is automatic.
Next I suggest she goes to bed. OK but "Do I have to take these off (clothes)?" I nod. "Well I am not going to wear that (her nightie). I hate it." I point out that there is a whole lot of things she hates at the moment (including me!). "Well, I am entitled to hate my nightie. Look at you. Look at all the things you hate."
Then she wants to show me what the neighbours have done. She points to the hedge that separates her property from the neighbour. "Look" she says, pointing to undisturbed earth beneath her hedge, "the neighbours dug their side of the garden and they threw the earth on my side." Needless to say it is utter rubbish and anyone can see her hedge and its underpinnings are just as they should be.
I have heard and seen just about as much Loss of Mind today as I can take. Husband feels the same. How long can I deal with someone making no sense of anything and yet able to twist what she says, aggressive with me, unhappy with life.
Right now I just feel switched off from her. Uncaring. I want to leave her to her own devices. She knows she is right. She sees nothing wrong in dumping pate into fruit salad, or hating a nightie that she liked yesterday, and believes every word she tells herself. Where will it all end?
It might be me who opts for the asylum. A double room for Best Beloved and I.
I saw this on the Wikipaedia Alzheimers page and it really fits the bill:
"Subjects also lose insight of the disease process and their limitations (anosognosia)"
This just about sums today up. No insight and complete denial. And this drives me crazy and shuts me down totally. I want away from this madness.
Here is a link to anosognosia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anosognosia
You are seeing me at my most infantile and pratt-like. Apologies. But no one could put up with this level of Loss of Mind for long. I am going mad.
Good night to all, and may tomorrow be better. BE