Hi,
First time post. I've signed up for some potential advice and as an outlet. I tend to be verbose so apologies for the length.
My nan (86) has been diagnosed with Parkinsons with dementia coming alongside as a side effect.
She's having a lot of trouble with her words and communication in general as a result of both things combined I would guess? She's had a couple speech therapy sessions but she doesn't seem to like/enjoy them very much.
She's doing a lot of the things that come up when you look at symptoms of dementia, constantly fiddling with things, getting everything out and "sorting" it out (which just means moving it around and unsorting it unfortunately), general restlessness and her time seems to be shifted a bit as well.
The docs have said regarding her physical health that she needs to relax more but unfortunately that's never been her mindset and seems to be the one thing that's survived, she gets up very early, always wants everything done her way (so she won't ask someone to do something, she'll try and do it herself), doesn't want to bother anyone, etc.
Our family kinda isn't great at talking to each other or acting the way you'd generally want a family to respond to things like this unfortunately. Her other kids (so my uncles and aunts) are kinda sticking their heads in the sand, acting like everything is normal and my mum is stuck having to act as the only one actually responding as needed, which is adding a lot of stress and obviously, she can't do it all, physically or mentally.
The thing that's prompted me to join the site is that my mum basically just had a breakdown to me about how under it she feels which came as a bit of knock on my head that I need to step up and we need to have a family discussion about what the others can do more of to spread the load.