Caring for someone with dementia presents many difficult challenges and requires caregivers to learn and practice the correct supportive behaviors. I’m still at the beginning of what is truly a learn-as-you-go journey. My single biggest challenge so far is keeping the reality of my mother’s disease at the forefront of my mind so that I can be the caregiver that she truly needs.
Each day, through all the dementia driven behaviors, my mother has lucid moments. Sometimes she’ll even have great days where only a few inconsequential memory failures happen, and the rest of the time she seems to be very close to the person I’ve known for the last sixty years. This is what fuels the dangerous illusion that creeps in to tell me she’s really not that bad and maybe I just worry too much. This only feeds the confusion that I too often feel as a caregiver that makes me question everything I do.
Then there are the behaviors that remind me that, yes, her dementia is real. This may be a small event in the scheme of things, but it’s a poignant reminder of the truth of her condition – and events like this are happening more often all the time. Yesterday my mother asked me where her broom was. I looked where it is usually kept and it wasn’t there, so I told her I didn’t know where it was. That’s when she told me I must have taken it (because there’s only two of us in the house and it wasn’t her) and I needed to return it to her immediately because it was her favorite broom. I went on a search, looking everywhere I could think of that it might be. In the end, I went to the store and bought her a new one… but it wasn’t the same as the other one and she didn’t like it. She continued to accuse me of hiding it from her. Unfortunately I’m not yet skilled at dealing with dementia behaviors and my firm denials only escalated her agitation.
Returning from a trip to the store today I found the new broom lying on my bed. When I asked her about it she told me she found where I hid her broom and was giving me back the one I bought. I responded that it was great she had found her broom and asked her where it was. “Right where you hid it in the dining room,” she said. When I looked over at the place where she normally keeps it, it wasn’t there so I asked where it was. She told me she had hidden it somewhere I wouldn’t be able to find it and take it from her again.
That’s where I took a completely wrong direction. Later this afternoon, once I calmed down and recovered emotionally, I decided to write this post. I’m no expert on any of this yet, so I started with some much needed research to understand more about what I was writing about. I found very helpful information at https://DailyCaring.com – the article that offered exactly the guidance I needed most in this situation called “8 ways to deal with false dementia accusations”. Reading this identified everything that I did wrong. Here’s the short list:
- I took it personally.
- I tried to rationalize and present a logical argument to convince her of the truth.
- I got agitated and irritated.
This will be a long journey for me. I have much to learn in order to become the best caregiver I can be. The single hardest part, as I understand more each day, is letting go of the image of who my mother was before the dementia. Every time I see her in her lucid moments, I see her as who she once was, and my understanding of who she is now becomes clouded.
I’ve decided that I really need to seek a caregiver support group. We all like to think we are strong, and most of the time we are… but that’s not really the issue. Support groups are about shared insights, guidance, and moral support from people who are in situations similar to ours. I’ll wrap this post up with a link to the DailyCaring page on Support Groups as a place to start. I hope you will share your own thoughts, ideas, and resources in the comments area as well – I really do have much to learn here. Thank you.
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