My husband is suffering from a variety of illnesses: diabetes (he has had one leg amputated and the other is now ulcerating), stroke (one major, many smaller and TIAs), vascular dementia. He has been in a care home for a year now and is well looked after, and until about a month ago he could communicate with me and the staff, although obviously there were some days when he was not so with it.
However, now he seems as though he has lost the ability to communicate: he can't find the words any more and when I go to see him I have to give him questions which he can just answer yes or no to; and even then most of the time he just gets lost and ends up staring into space. The staff say he has forgotten how to move his legs so when they get him up on his zimmer he tries to move both at the same time. They too have noticed that these symptoms have increased dramatically over the past couple of weeks. Yesterday, I took my laptop with some photos to show him, but he could only concentrate on the packet of crisps someone had given him.
I know he is not going to get better - I am reconciled to that. But where do we go from here? Does anyone else have any experience of this kind of rapid deterioration? I thought initially when he was first like this that it was just an off day, but it seems this is how he is from now on and I can't find 'him' there any more - just a confused, ill stranger who is more interested in the cream cake he has been given, than in my arrival. It is all so very sad.
However, now he seems as though he has lost the ability to communicate: he can't find the words any more and when I go to see him I have to give him questions which he can just answer yes or no to; and even then most of the time he just gets lost and ends up staring into space. The staff say he has forgotten how to move his legs so when they get him up on his zimmer he tries to move both at the same time. They too have noticed that these symptoms have increased dramatically over the past couple of weeks. Yesterday, I took my laptop with some photos to show him, but he could only concentrate on the packet of crisps someone had given him.
I know he is not going to get better - I am reconciled to that. But where do we go from here? Does anyone else have any experience of this kind of rapid deterioration? I thought initially when he was first like this that it was just an off day, but it seems this is how he is from now on and I can't find 'him' there any more - just a confused, ill stranger who is more interested in the cream cake he has been given, than in my arrival. It is all so very sad.