For me, one of the most challenging adaptations I’m having to make is learning to put aside personal feelings and all behavioral expectations regarding my mother. Her dementia, for several years, was primarily evidenced as increasingly unreliable short-term and working memory function. After coming home from her last hospitalization, I’m seeing more frequent occurrences of unexpected mood swings and hostile behaviors. Perhaps the hardest part of this is finding the strength to not take it personally and not allowing my feelings to be hurt by her harsh words or cold treatment.
I know it’s not her fault, I know it’s not real and that it’s not her but the dementia that makes her behave this way. I know that I am the one who must rise to the occasion, accept her with patience and understanding, and move past my own sensitivities in order to be the best caregiver that I can. But this is the newest challenge for me, and I’m learning that it’s not easy. Most days, the tone for the day is set by how my mother feels when she wakes up. There are days when she wakes up angry, other days she wakes happy, but most days she’s fairly neutral. No matter what her state, as a live-in caregiver, I am the one who gets the full experience.
Today, our first interaction was her angrily questioning me about what I had done with her vitamins. They were where they have always been, on the window shelf over the kitchen sink, and I said as much. She told me she looked there and apparently I had moved them somewhere else and she was very upset about it. I offered her my arm, and said, “Let’s go see if we can find them.” After grudgingly taking my arm and shooting me a classic dirty look, we walked together to the kitchen to find the vitamins right where they always sit. She told me with a bit of suspicion in her eyes that she didn’t see them when she looked there. I got one out of the container and handed it to her with a glass of water, she took the vitamin but refused my offer of help back to her chair. Now I’m just getting the silent treatment. This is where she pretends I don’t exist, acting as though she is in the room by herself.
Yesterday was a great day and I was the best son in the world for taking care of her so well. Last week she threatened to call the police to have me taken away. Each day, it’s basically a roll of the dice as to just who she will be. But even on the bad mornings, there’s hope. Some days the anger lasts most or even all day, and on other days it lasts for an hour or so before it’s simply forgotten and we start fresh.
I think that the lesson here for me is that I need to put aside any personal expectations for her behavior and simply take each day, each moment, as it comes. I need to keep a clear understanding at the forefront of my mind that the harsh words and cold treatment aren’t coming from her – they are caused only by the progression of her dementia. The best I can offer her is to always see her as the kind and gentle-spoken person that she was before the dementia. I need to always know in my heart that her new behaviors are nothing more than symptoms of her growing brain disorder.
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