Warning long post
I haven’t posted here for some time but read the forum every day. Occasionally in the intervening months I have thought I must update my thread, but somehow it hasn’t happened.
Mum had her first covid jab, suffered several side-effects and with a (coincidental?) shift in her dementia I reverted to hand-writing daily events.
207 sides of A4 paper later and continuing with the analogy of my thread title, up until the start of this year, my trek has been meandering along plains and foothills with the occasionally rocky outcrop to find a way around. The meandering is coming to an end, there’s jungle ahead (still a little way off, maybe). Though I haven’t yet required any assistance from sherpas, my next step after this update is to make that call. I have managed to step over one or two lines that were on the original map, but there are now cracks that require more like a leap to cross, and I think there’s a big chasm probably before we reach the jungle. If I look through binoculars, that chasm looks close enough for me to touch.
So why am I here now?
Those who have read my thread know that my mum’s mixed dementia mainly manifests itself in delusions and fantasies…people on the TV and in books and magazines are real people to talk with. She has had several boyfriends/love interests, but one by one, when her love is unrequited, she moves onto the next candidate. So-and-so was going to take me out/phone/write/call in and hasn’t. I’m not going to be treated like that any longer…
Towards the end of the year (2021), I had started checking through her People’s Friend magazine before giving it to her, un-airbrushing the pictures of men I thought she would attach herself to…it’s amazing how much print you can remove with a pencil eraser! As a replacement I introduced her to a fluffy toy cat, I’m not sure where it had come from, possible she had won it but put it aside. She turned her attention and affection to the cat, and over Christmas I added a dog and at Easter a koala bear.
Although this stopped her flirting with all and sundry on TV or in her magazines, it introduced another problem in that she wouldn’t stay in bed at night, she had to make sure ‘her children’ were ok and would be up at all hours of the night (her concept of time has in the main gone. She can see it’s 2 o’clock but 2am or 2pm doesn’t mean anything – ‘mum, it’s still the middle of the night, look it’s dark outside’ ‘So you say’ is her reply) This has been partially resolved by getting her to take them up to bed with her each night, but she still won’t stay in bed if it ‘feels’ the right time to get up. Not helped this time of year with the sun rising at 3.30am
And now onto the latest development
She has been happily reading People’s Friend annuals but a month ago came across one that covered Big Band musicians…and there before her are A6 size pictures of some of the greats and she has become besotted/mesmerised/transfixed with two of them (she is down to just one picture because in her flirty state one evening she had written ‘tonight’ across the picture, thought better of it and in trying to undo what she had written, ended up making a huge whole in the picture and obliterating the face.) Initial smiles and chatting/whispering developed two weeks later into stroking and kissing the pictures. If I passed any comment, she’d whisper to the pictures ‘…she just jealous’
Last week I was stunned (I think this is the right word) to see her start snogging the picture. Not just a closed lip, long kiss, this was lips open and tongue licking the page of the book. Wipe saliva of page and repeat. This went on for half an hour, she seemed oblivious to me being there and when I questioned ‘Mum, are you licking that page?’ I got a ‘I’m minding my own business’.
That night, I tucked her up in bed, switched off her light and shut her door, got into my own bed. Within minutes her light switch went on and she started chatting. I gave her 15 minutes, she didn’t stop, so I went to ask her to please stop talking. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, her nightdress buttons undone, and she was showing her breasts to the picture in her book. Ok, don’t overreact…take book from her hands, put it on the table, do her buttons back up, ‘oh mum, all your buttons have come undone’, get her back into bed, switch light off, shut door, get back into bed…and lo and behold the talking starts up again. I’d been awake since 2.30am that day and I was desperate for sleep. Three times I went back and asked her to please stop talking and eventually I had to go and sleep on the sofa.
To some extent I wasn’t that shocked to see her, the snogging she was doing earlier in the day left no doubt what she’d like to do next if she could. On several occasions I have heard her whisper to ‘boyfriends’ ‘give her a few minutes to get into bed and then come to my bedroom’
I’m at a loss as to how to handle this and I was wondering if anyone has encountered something similar with their female PWD and what they did about it, or if anyone has a suggestion as to how they would tackle it.
On the one hand, she is happy in her own little bubble of reality, and it isn’t causing anyone any harm (though I do wonder if spending 12 hours a day staring and whispering etc to a picture is good for her). It bothers me because it’s not nice seeing your mother behave like this. Any friend snogging the face off someone we would tell them to get a room. She seems to have time-travelled back to late teens/early twenties.
I haven’t(fortunately) witnessed a repeat performance (there is no way I am going back into her bedroom once I have shut her door at night) but I have seen her toying with her top, smiling at the picture and whispering ‘this one?’ ‘This one?’ ‘This one? as if pointing at buttons. There are comments like ’we can’t do anything in front of her’
Yesterday, she was pulling down the waistband of her skirt and I was wondering if it was too tight/uncomfortable but then she got that smile on her face and dug deeper to pull up and show the book the top of her lace knickers (well, Tena pullup to be exact). I felt like a voyeur, she is oblivious to me being there. I looked straight at her, started to laugh and shake my head and she just looked blankly at me for a few seconds before closing the book.
Any thoughts? She’s on memantine and I wonder if an increase in dosage might help reduce the delusions?
I was starting to feel bad that she didn’t have anyone other than me to talk to (or my other me who is occasionally here). I have a good explanation for when it’s time for them to leave, they need to go back to the surgery to help the next people being vaccinated. But they can stay for now.
