Todays visit to Mum.

As some of you may know, my MIL has dementia ( sges in total denial of that fact) and due to circulation problems, she had a leg amutated in September. We arrived today. She is living in her own home with carers calling 4 times a day. At weekends, when we call, there is often a carer theremakibg her lunch or getting her up. Some are lovely and good at their jobs, others, not so.
When we arrived at lunchtime today, the carer was with mum in her bedroom. Hubs and I did some household jobs. Mum called hubs for help. The carer asked him to get mum on to the stand to get her out of bed. We are not trained to use the equipment, plus he has back issues and....its the carers job to get mum up and changed. She did so without help and mum had a moan how unhelpful hubs had been.
The carer came into the kitchen to put the bedding in the washing machine...but....it wouldnt come on. Hubs had to take it out of its space to check the plug.....turned it off and on and it came back on! As we were in the process of putting back in its space, the carer wheeled mum passed the kitchen door and she screamed at us....'what the hell are you doing!' So i explained the machine wouldnt come on so hubs was trying to find the problem. She them said, 'well you must have broken it...it was fine yesterday' then went on to say to the carer the we stealing it....that we are always taking her stuff!!
The carer offered to make mum lunch and she said she didnt want anything, so the carer left without even giving mum a drink.
I asked before we left if she'd like anything abd she said, 'im fine... i've got plenty in the fridge'....totally ignoring the fact she can't get to the fridge! She let me make her a hot choc, and reminded her it would be 5 hrs before the xarer came back. She insisted she didnt need anything else.
10 mins after we left...hubs phone goes.....'you didnt give me any lunch! I cant wait til 5.30 to eat!!
So.. we went back and made her a sandwich.

God give me stength!!!!

4meAndyou · F

You are going through one of the most difficult experiences of your life right now. Imagine how your husband feels, because this is HIS Mum whose mind has gone.

When I went through it with my mother, I didn't understand what was happening to her, and later I took a job working with Alzheimer's patients, after a great deal of training.

My mother was actually quite cruel in the midst of her dementia. She would say things to deliberately wound. If I took her out to eat, and got her a second plate of food at the buffet, she would deliberately smear my clothes with gravy when I deposited her plate.

This emotional anger is one of the few things Alzheimer's patients have in common. Most of their other feelings have been erased along with their destroyed brain cells, but anger remains.

One thing you CAN do to smooth out your time with your MIL is to make up a playlist of music that was popular when she was about 16 years old, and put the music onto an IPOD and give it to her. Patients who are basically vegetables and are in bed all the time, listen to music and trying to move to the music in their beds. The part of the brain which loves and appreciates and remembers music is among the last to be destroyed.

Your weekend carer did a sh!t job, that's for sure. She probably couldn't wait to get out of there, and didn't mind putting her job onto both of you.

4meAndyou · F

@RubySoo Well, I am proud of him, too. I've worked with a couple families where the grown children were absolutely beastly toward their parent with dementia, and it tells the world that they are NOT good people. Your husband IS good people.

4meAndyou · F

@RubySoo You are so lucky YOU married the right guy!!! But then, you were the right girl for him, too!