As the eldest daughter, I became responsible for ensuring my mother got the right attention since my father really didn't understand what was happening to my mother....even after we got her into assisted living.
My dad was very stubborn. It was after the police brought my wandering mother back to the house one summer afternoon. While he was in the bathroom, she got out and went looking for her mother who had been dead for many years. She crossed busy streets loaded with Sunday traffic. At a Wawa food store she became agitated and, lucky for us, the fellow recognized the signs and called police. " Sundowning " can be very dangerous.
My sister called me to say the police wanted to talk to me: this is what let my father let me in charge.
However, I could tell that there were cognitive changes because she would participate in conversations with nonstop repetition of the same questions even after they were adequately answered. This drove my father crazy.
She would go up to their bedroom and close the door to have conversations with relatives who had passed. We discovered later as we straightened out their bedroom when she went into assisted care that she had been hiding any and everything in unimaginable places: we had to go through a box of napkins and open each one to find money and jewelry.
Once I got the okay, I took my mother to her PCP and a neurologist to check for normal signs of aging (she was 80). Observing her going through the simple tests, I could see how she struggled. I got my father to accompany us to her PCP visits but they both would tell him all was okay.
From that point on, I would prepare a write up of what I or my sisters had seen occur. I created different categories of behavior. I gave this to the nurse so the doctor could read it before meeting with us. It took about 18 months until we got her into assisted living.
The worst mistake we made was choosing the nicest looking facility....their business model was the worst for someone with memory issues as they had their apartments mixed in on all floors with folks who had no memory issues. Their daily schedule force memory impaired folks to go up and down on this elevator 4-5 times a day: this constant changing was extremely upsetting to them and escalated bad behavior. Some folks were sent to a lockdown unit at the local hospital.
After her second " visit " there, the social worker ran into me at a lawn and garden center. She apologized that she couldn't tell me at work that my mother needed to be in a different type place. The memory care place I chose brought about a calming change in my mother.
She flourished there until the disease progressed to where legally they needed to have her placed into a nursing home.
If you are concerned for your self or for a friend, the sooner proper attention is gotten, the sooner steps can be taken to slow down progression of the disease. There are newer drugs now available that weren't there for my mother. Who knows how much longer she could have lived at home with earlier intervention ?
It and related variations of the disease are heart breaking.
We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.
Sir Winston Churchill
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