Dementia Support Group
Dementia is the progressive decline in cognitive function due to damage or disease in the brain beyond what might be expected from normal aging. Particularly affected areas may be memory, attention, language and problem solving, although particularly in the later stages of the condition, affected persons may be disoriented in time, place and person (not knowing who they...
My husband is at a dinner meeting with related to his work and a community project. So, I am alone with my MIL for dinner.
I made her a baked chicken breast, sliced into medallions, I made her favorite homemade egg noodles and gave her a cup of them, a one cup portion of fresh steamed green beans, and I baked a lemon pound cake, as that is her favorite too, and she had one section of a bundt pan slice. Dinner was served at 5pm.
She has breakfast at 9:30am, and refuses to eat any lunch or a snack during the day at all. Her breakfast was two eggs scrambled, two slices of cinnamon raisin toast, two sausage links, a 4oz glass of Simply Orange juice, and a cup of coffee.
She ate the eggs. Refused the toast and sausage (which is from a butcher shop that she loves their sausages), but drank the orange juice and coffee.
I tried to get her to have an apple sliced with a slice of cheese and some crackers at 1:00pm, and she cried and refused, claimly she is too full and can't eat another bite.
Tonight for dinner, she ate one medallion of the chicken breast, about 7-8 noodles, and one green bean. The cake is still on a plate untouched.
She is eating, but very, very little and is quite emphatic about how she is too full.
So, in making conversation, I said, "Have you called any of your friends lately?" She said "no" in a very firm and nasty sort of way. So, I said, "why aren't you calling them, is there a problem?". She said, "I have nothing to tell them, so I don't call and when they call, I tell them I cannot talk now." So, I said, "You have lots of things to say! Tell them about the flowers blooming outside your windows, tell them about how beautiful it is to sit outside in the sunshine and watch the birds, especially the humming birds!" She got very beligerant, stuck her head up and back, jutted out her chin and in a very mean voice said, "I have nothing to say to them! They all know that you don't let me do nothing! They all know that I am a prisoner here!!!" and she gave me a look that should have made me simple roll over and die.
Instead, I said, very hurt, very upset, very frustrated.. "Oh yes, your life is just miserable here! There is nothing special for you! We never feed you, we make you sleep in filthy bedding and dress in rags! You are worse than in a prison during WWII! Oh you poor, poor woman!"
She said, "Yeah, you're right! This is worse than going to prison! I can do nothing and you always pick on me, always have your way!"
I got up.. left the room. Waited until she went to her rooms, (she has a whole 1000 sq ft of space with dedicated bedroom, bathroom, linen closets, den, and a televison room wiht lots of bright windows with plantation shutters and decorated in all HER things to make it more like home and comfortable for her)!
After cleaning up the kitchen and starting the dishwasher I came to the computer and came here.
I am disgusted that I gave into her and had words, yet I am sick to death of her being a mean, wicked, nasty woman to me too!
It isn't like once she was nice.. she wasn't! She has always been a witch towards me!
The therapist told me to ignore it. My doctor told me to ignore it. They've both said she is like a 3 to 6 year old emotionally and would a 3 to 6 year old upset me this way? Well. NOOOOOO.. but she IS my mother-in-law and she has always been a mean woman with a sharp tongue. I just can't see her as a 3 to 6 year old when she is dishing it out to me!
My husband just wants me to buck-up and shut-up and deal with it and ignore her.
However. HE is the one out at an ADULT dinner meeting talking about interesting projects and funcitoning with other adults in a creative and fun way. HE goes to work everyday and leaves me home with his mother.
I AM THE PRISONER~ I am the one stuck in this house and cannot make a move without her in tow!
Sorry to vent. But, man.. I need to vent!
So, I've made sure she is safe and watching television in her room, and I came here. I am going to undress, put on some comfortable pajamas, and crawl into bed. I might read, I might listen to music. I might do the best to pretend I do not have to share my personal space with that awful woman!
And, no matter what! I am NOT going to go out of my way and make special things for her anymore! I am going to feed her what everyone else would have!
What did I have for dinner?
I ate a bowl of Quaker Oatmeal Squares with some b;ackberries on them and skim milk before I fed my MIL. Why before? Because I have to cue her to eat, encourage her to take another bite, and assist her. Or, she'd eat nothing at all.
Man, I hate my life whenever I am unable to ignore the reality of it..
I made her a baked chicken breast, sliced into medallions, I made her favorite homemade egg noodles and gave her a cup of them, a one cup portion of fresh steamed green beans, and I baked a lemon pound cake, as that is her favorite too, and she had one section of a bundt pan slice. Dinner was served at 5pm.
She has breakfast at 9:30am, and refuses to eat any lunch or a snack during the day at all. Her breakfast was two eggs scrambled, two slices of cinnamon raisin toast, two sausage links, a 4oz glass of Simply Orange juice, and a cup of coffee.
She ate the eggs. Refused the toast and sausage (which is from a butcher shop that she loves their sausages), but drank the orange juice and coffee.
I tried to get her to have an apple sliced with a slice of cheese and some crackers at 1:00pm, and she cried and refused, claimly she is too full and can't eat another bite.
Tonight for dinner, she ate one medallion of the chicken breast, about 7-8 noodles, and one green bean. The cake is still on a plate untouched.
She is eating, but very, very little and is quite emphatic about how she is too full.
So, in making conversation, I said, "Have you called any of your friends lately?" She said "no" in a very firm and nasty sort of way. So, I said, "why aren't you calling them, is there a problem?". She said, "I have nothing to tell them, so I don't call and when they call, I tell them I cannot talk now." So, I said, "You have lots of things to say! Tell them about the flowers blooming outside your windows, tell them about how beautiful it is to sit outside in the sunshine and watch the birds, especially the humming birds!" She got very beligerant, stuck her head up and back, jutted out her chin and in a very mean voice said, "I have nothing to say to them! They all know that you don't let me do nothing! They all know that I am a prisoner here!!!" and she gave me a look that should have made me simple roll over and die.
Instead, I said, very hurt, very upset, very frustrated.. "Oh yes, your life is just miserable here! There is nothing special for you! We never feed you, we make you sleep in filthy bedding and dress in rags! You are worse than in a prison during WWII! Oh you poor, poor woman!"
She said, "Yeah, you're right! This is worse than going to prison! I can do nothing and you always pick on me, always have your way!"
I got up.. left the room. Waited until she went to her rooms, (she has a whole 1000 sq ft of space with dedicated bedroom, bathroom, linen closets, den, and a televison room wiht lots of bright windows with plantation shutters and decorated in all HER things to make it more like home and comfortable for her)!
After cleaning up the kitchen and starting the dishwasher I came to the computer and came here.
I am disgusted that I gave into her and had words, yet I am sick to death of her being a mean, wicked, nasty woman to me too!
It isn't like once she was nice.. she wasn't! She has always been a witch towards me!
The therapist told me to ignore it. My doctor told me to ignore it. They've both said she is like a 3 to 6 year old emotionally and would a 3 to 6 year old upset me this way? Well. NOOOOOO.. but she IS my mother-in-law and she has always been a mean woman with a sharp tongue. I just can't see her as a 3 to 6 year old when she is dishing it out to me!
My husband just wants me to buck-up and shut-up and deal with it and ignore her.
However. HE is the one out at an ADULT dinner meeting talking about interesting projects and funcitoning with other adults in a creative and fun way. HE goes to work everyday and leaves me home with his mother.
I AM THE PRISONER~ I am the one stuck in this house and cannot make a move without her in tow!
Sorry to vent. But, man.. I need to vent!
So, I've made sure she is safe and watching television in her room, and I came here. I am going to undress, put on some comfortable pajamas, and crawl into bed. I might read, I might listen to music. I might do the best to pretend I do not have to share my personal space with that awful woman!
And, no matter what! I am NOT going to go out of my way and make special things for her anymore! I am going to feed her what everyone else would have!
What did I have for dinner?
I ate a bowl of Quaker Oatmeal Squares with some b;ackberries on them and skim milk before I fed my MIL. Why before? Because I have to cue her to eat, encourage her to take another bite, and assist her. Or, she'd eat nothing at all.
Man, I hate my life whenever I am unable to ignore the reality of it..
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I have been here before, a long long time ago and now I am back.Forgive me for not just saying what I want to say,even under a triple dose of antidepressants it is still raw and seeping and I am hesitant at revealing it as at least under the bandages around my heart I don,t have to look at how raw and wounded.My child was cleaved from my heart by his own actions. my child of ten,turning eleven...
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I gave my 2 week notice last Friday 13th. Now to join you fine people in a life of leisure and nothing else to do but to look out for myself....is it just me or does that sound pretty boring? My goal was to live to retire and I guess having to take early retirement because of health reasons wasn't exactly the way I had planned things. I just can't stay in that building that is reeking mildew...
Until I put Bob in a nursing home I was a prisoner, for more than 2 years. I didn't even have anybody else to vent on.
This is just so awful and it is unbelievably helpful to communicate with others.
I have been taking care of my MIL for almost going on six years!
Yesterday, I saw a travel thing in the Costco flyer about going to Hawaii! Oh, you have no idea how wonderful that would be! To visit paradise and get away from the stresses of caregiving and even if I had to share a hotel with a thousand other people, I would be more alone than I am in this house wtih my MIL!
But, we can't go. We are the only family she has. There is nobody else we can lean on, or ever get angry with for their lack of support!
It has been a 24/7 job for me since September 2002.
I sent my husband an email.. and told him I was cracking and the only glue I needed was TIME AWAY FROM HIS MOTHER!
So, I will see what develops.
Since my Mother has been living with us, my husband has run away in a sense. He works 6 or 7 days a week - 10 to 12 hour days.
I am grateful for my job and Mom goes to a wonderful day care center while I am at work. But, I either work at home or at my regular job. There is no play.
I just found this place tonight. I hope it helps me cope.
Well anyhow, my friend said because they feel they are losing control over there life they will control anything they still can...which makes us miserable of course. If we want them to eat..they won't..take a bath when we have time...no way! Get dressed..forget it! They are desperately trying to hold on to their "old " position as the parent and being in charge. So in their 3 yr old mentality, they are still trying to control things.
Not that knowing this helps the hurt...like I said I only spent 3 days, and I called a family meeting, My mom will ruin my sister's family if this continues. She works full time, has 2 girls , lives next door to mom and has been doing most of mom's daily stuff for the past 3 years since my Dad died. Before that we had hospice, and we were concetrating on him and his passing. So it has been along 5 years. We do all take turns, My sister in TN comes 2x a year for 3 weeks, my brother in Nevada comes out 2x for 2 weeks to just do household things , like building her a new bathroom, moving her appliances to the kitchen ect...I go at least once a month for several days, but we all have lives to continue, kids, farms , work commitments ect.. It is getting time to look at other options, and I'm not sure what all that entails. She will not go to a nursing home as long as she can think at all. We have a housekeeper, who comes 1-2 times a week, but we really need one daily for at least 5 hours a day.
Mom has fallen (never broke anything) but she has never used her alert button, she just waits to be found , or scoots to the phone to call for help! Her friends still visit her, but she refuses to wear her hearing aid, or to pay for her needs, like pharmaceuticals, groceries..and accuses my sister who is with her twice a day of stealing from her, and her kids of messing up her TV, and touching things (they are 8&12!)
It seems like everyone who has elderly parents with some form of dementia is in the same leaky boat. And doctors just call it old age...I wonder if they would say that if they were living with them.
I love my mom so much, she was good, and caring, and generous, and loving...I don't know this stranger she has become, and it hurts to see her losing herself. I keep reminding myself that God does have a hand in all this and I have more lessons to learn from it. But, mostly I wish I had appeciated her more when she could have understood how much I do appreciate all she has done for me....
Oh Mom!
Just venting
For the series, Bradshaw commisioned a sculptor to create an enormous large metal mobile to demonstrate a healthy family in balance. Each time he struck it for emphasis during his lecture series,it went haywire to illustrate how illness of any kind in a family, puts the entire system out of whack. It was a rather dramatic display of how each family's focus is shifted to one person, and how very often they lose sight of themselves in the process. Bradshaw's background is alcohol and drug addiction, but he points out that family members unknowingly find themselves becoming addicted to the sick person. As their lives begin to revolve more and more around the sick member and their illness, they (you and I) lose perspective and the ability to priortize is compromised.
This is certainly true in my case with my mother having developed pharmaceutically-induced dementia following knee-replacement surgery at age 81. Four months into her recovery, she fell and broke her hip in a so called "barrier-free" Handicapped Parking space at a beauty shop the week following her 82nd birthday. Yet again, another course of anesthestic's and narcotic pain medication, and the unexplained onset of epileptic seizures, initiating an exhausting challenge for us both.
My life changed dramatically over four years ago when she was hospitalized for a para-esophageal hernia which needed surgery to correct. Since that time she has had trouble with choking and swallowing, lost a inordinate amount of weight, had numerous hospitilizations, and a never-ending bout with chronic pain from childhood scoliosis. That, along with osteoarthritis affecting both knees has been a wearing experience to say the least. We both suffer from detiorating spinal injuries after being rear-ended on two separate occasions. Both were large trucks, and in one instance we were dead-stopped still at a red light when we were hit by a concrete truck traveling over 50mph. We were in her brand new Windstar Van which, I believe,is the reason we are both fortunate, and blessed, to be alive. Added is the fact we always travel in the company of angels...
It is by God's grace that my glass remains half-full. Ingrained in me is the teaching that I can "do all things through Christ who strengthen's me," and that God will never put more on me than I can handle.
Bradshaw teaches "that the only way out of it is through it." I have been "through it'" before and made it. Being from the south I am reminded of a line in the script from the play "Steel Magnolia's," If you haven't seen the play, I highly recommend it. Unlike the film, the entire play takes place in the beauty shop. The line: "If it doesn't kill you...it'll make you stronger." Amen to that! The muscles in my skull (and psyche) have to be extraordinary.
Here's what works for me. I take each day as it comes and try not to get into unmanageable tomorrow's. That's God's business. Every morning I look in front of me and see what there is to do for just today...and then I do it.
duxinaro
Co-Conspirator to Make The World a Better Place