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memorycare[A friend complained on social media that he couldn't believe how quickly his mother had declined in "just" 28 months since her dementia diagnosis. This was my response.]
My mother devolved rapidly within only a year of her diagnosis, though she was exhibiting signs for about a year before that.
Know this: Anything you do or don't do won't have the slightest effect on her devolution. It's gonna happen no matter where she is or who's she with.
Doesn't matter if you house her in a shithole or the Taj Mahal; she's going to continue to decline, and you can't change or delay it.
Trust me, every family with a demented member has tried everything in a vain attempt to slow the decline of their loved one. The only thing such efforts accomplish is to give the family a sense of false hope that gets dashed a few days, weeks, or months later. Don't fall into that trap.
As the neurologist and social worker at Kaiser explained to me, you have only three duties regarding a demented family member:
Everything else that everyone else in or out of your family throws at you is bullshit for which you most sincerely don't time or energy.
Seriously. Everything else is bullshit.
"Safe. Physically comfortable. Reassured." That's it.
The sooner you work through those three points and learn to focus ONLY on those three points when making decisions from this point forward, the easier the rest of this journey will become for you...or perhaps "less difficult" is a better description.
The harder truth to point out is that this is no longer the woman who raised you. This is a person who looks and sounds like your mother, and who has a lot of her memories, but the woman you knew before is psychically, psychologically, cognitively dead. It's just taking the body a while to figure it out.
My mother devolved rapidly within only a year of her diagnosis, though she was exhibiting signs for about a year before that.
Know this: Anything you do or don't do won't have the slightest effect on her devolution. It's gonna happen no matter where she is or who's she with.
Doesn't matter if you house her in a shithole or the Taj Mahal; she's going to continue to decline, and you can't change or delay it.
Trust me, every family with a demented member has tried everything in a vain attempt to slow the decline of their loved one. The only thing such efforts accomplish is to give the family a sense of false hope that gets dashed a few days, weeks, or months later. Don't fall into that trap.
As the neurologist and social worker at Kaiser explained to me, you have only three duties regarding a demented family member:
1. Keep her physically safe.
2. Keep her physically comfortable. (She'll never be emotionally comfortable again, so give up on that right now.)
3. Give her as much reassurance and love as you can, and have the rest of your family do the same.
2. Keep her physically comfortable. (She'll never be emotionally comfortable again, so give up on that right now.)
3. Give her as much reassurance and love as you can, and have the rest of your family do the same.
Everything else that everyone else in or out of your family throws at you is bullshit for which you most sincerely don't time or energy.
Seriously. Everything else is bullshit.
"Safe. Physically comfortable. Reassured." That's it.
The sooner you work through those three points and learn to focus ONLY on those three points when making decisions from this point forward, the easier the rest of this journey will become for you...or perhaps "less difficult" is a better description.
The harder truth to point out is that this is no longer the woman who raised you. This is a person who looks and sounds like your mother, and who has a lot of her memories, but the woman you knew before is psychically, psychologically, cognitively dead. It's just taking the body a while to figure it out.
