Tipping Point

Glad you can come here to get your feelings off your chest and rationalised! My dear father died this year and had dementia for the last 10 years of his life...i was often taken as others in the family and yes it can be hurtful...loads of hugs to you and all your family .xxx

Oh granny I'm so sorry to hear this, it must be very difficult for you. I sometimes wonder what my DH would have been like if he'd lived long enough to get dementia and how we'd cope. I'm not sure that I'd have remained terribly cheerful about it. Vent away on here.

How awful for you that you should be mistaken for the one person who you disliked. However, as unsettling as it is, try not to let it take over your thoughts. When you find yourself thinking about your MIL's misdeeds, actively force yourself to think of a positive time and gradually she will stop haunting your thoughts. It really does work if you keep at it.
My dear old Grandad who lived with us had dementia. He often used to confuse my Mum for his bossy, scary, dead sister but rather than avoiding her like he did when she was alive, he got brave with the dementia and relished in telling her some "home truths". No matter how I tried to explain to my Mum that it was just the dementia, she couldn't help herself but would act just like her aunt! Consequently, I used to have to physically pull them apart. It was like trying to control 2 very wayward kids. At the time it was distressing but now I can see the funny side of things.

Lots of really useful info on here. I hope it's helping, G23. The villages sound ideal, don't they? I don't have personal experience, but sending supportive thoughts anyway. As someone has remarked already, I just admire those of you coping with this condition day to day. to you all.

kittylester thanks for that link. It explains a lot.

So sorry to read this. Huge hugs to ?

Just heartbreaking. Many years ago I used to bump into a man in our local shop. He seemed to think I was his sister! I didn't realise at the time he had dementia.

By the way G23 - you probably already know this, but people suffering from dementia are often worse if they become constipated. This is true of my OH (who has PD) - all his symptoms get worse - mental and physical. So plenty of prunes!

Wilma - that village in Denmark is fascinating. There is a home near here for folk with dementia and it has a room that is set up as it would have been at the time when most of the residents were young - old-style TV, decor etc. - and there are also things around the corridors and in other rooms - old-style telephones, hooks on the walls with handbags hanging that anyone can pick up and adopt as their own for a while. Lots of little touches that seem to go down well.

The bookshelf idea is great kitty. I used to work on a dementia unit and I vividly remember a lady who had insight into her condition and was very distressed. I said to her that her brain was like a box of treasure that had filled right up and the new treasure that was put in fell out of the top as there was no room for it. She said: "Oh, how lovely|"; and minute later said: "What did you say" - which rather illustrated the point.

G23 - I am sorry you are having to deal with all this. It is hard to stay grounded when your home mate is living a different reality, some of which you have to go along with for the sake of your own sanity.

My mum died from dementia in September - she was 86 but thought she was 30 and thought she still lived in her childhood home with her parents. I understand why you would be upset and I can't imagine how I would cope if it had been my husband rather than my mother. Sending hugs.

Granny23 A suggestion for cutting out one of the many things that OH does is a central heating controller with a child lock. I have just had a Hive controller fitted which has one (and is also very easy to operate). The only drawback is the cost - mine was £159 (inc. fitting) in the Black Friday sale, but it is usually well over £200.

He may not know who you are, but still linked you to love and support ?

I'm really shocked to hear that gg! We are all about support and informationvand attendees are fulsome in their thanks.

If that has been your experience then please give feed back.

Kitty, I have found that the people who care for carers can be quite brutal so have avoided any courses on offer. Perhaps, once we get the new carer plan in place, I will look again.

Granny23 I don't have any words of wisdom to contribute but I'm sending hugs and .
Both of my parents had dementia, Dad probably Alzheimer's, not properly diagnosed, he had so many other things wrong with him and Mum had Lewy Body Dementia.
It is so incredibly hard watching someone you love trying to make sense of the world as they see it.

It is good, isn't it. It is given to people who come on the Carer's courses and they all say how much clearer it makes things.

I meant to say that my mum had a thing about bins. Apparently, the people in the flat above were putting their rubbish in her bin. When I suggested putting hers in theirs, she got terribly distressed.

Kitty - what an excellent description. Many thanks.

OH forgot who I was ages ago , but just for that day , now he calls for me if I am out of his line of vision , but at least he calls me by my name

Please look at my link to the Bookcase Model of Memory - it helps understand do much.

Just a hug, g23. What a hard thing to cope with.

I don't know how you all cope. I really don't. I watched a TV documentary some years ago about a dementia village in the Netherlands which I think is amazing. You can read about it here

Hogewey Village

And this is a little video about the village

Hogewey Village video

The residents have severe dementia and need 24 hour care. The village enables them to live in the reality of the world they remember and it helps them to be calm. Now the first dementia village is planned for Canterbury the UK based on the laptop Hogewey model. I hope a village is built near me until science comes up with some effective treatment for dementia.

Best wishes to all of you coping with partners struggling to make sense of their world.

What is it with bins? I have to just empty mums bin in the kitchen and I always thinks she is about to cry so I feel a real heel. She always says (crys?) " but they don't come until Thursday". As it could be Thursday when she says it I'm a bit stuck and just do it as quickly as possible and then make a cup of tea or do something else to distract.

I am sorry about your mother in law. Do you think she made your DH feel out of control of his life? I imagine he feels that at the moment without it being anything to do with you. If that is the case he will be looking for what makes him feel like that and it would be easy for him to associate the feeling with his mother. I wonder if, rather then seeing you as his mother, his mother being there would be his logical 'jump' over the gaps he has.

I don't mean this flippantly but my mother was burning her meals or not cooking them properly. It could not be her so it had to be the fact (dementia logic) that I was ordering the meals on the internet and they were sending the rubbish because of this. This didn't hurt me because it wasn't personal and I have a feeling - only from my experience - that your DH is not 'seeing' you as his mother but 'seeing' that as the logical reason for feeling a lack of control and understanding. Could this be possible do you think?

By the way, we have now had a mental capacity assessment and disconnected the cooker. Mum will have to have carers to cook lunch and her evening meal but I am going over to do them at the moment. Because mum does not know why she may not cook the meals - she can do it without any problem in her mind - she keeps telling me I am like her mother. There is nothing worse, to her, that she can say. I keep telling myself it is because of her loss of control and the anxiety it causes but it still hurts and she is my very elderly mum. It is very different when it is the person you chose to spend your life with and it must hurt so much more. I am stepping this up to this time.

I can't thank you all enough for your understanding and wise words. DH has been OK today but now, as it is approaching bedtime he has been scouring the house for the 'workmen' who were here today because their van is still outside. The reality is that there has been no one here but us chickens and the van belongs to an across the road neighbour and sits there every night. Like Annsixty's DH he regularly thinks the DGC are here and hiding from him.

The reason for the apparent rapid progress of DH's condition is that it took years to get a proper formal diagnosis as his symptoms did not appear to fit any of the types of dementia (and also, being a clever man) he managed to charm his way through verbal memory tests, blithely making up car registration numbers and avoiding the count backwards in 7's from 100 type by boring the tester to death with a long account of his problems with numbers caused by his 1st teacher in Primary school. I sat in on one test and although he did not get a single question right he was deemed to have only mild cognitive impairment. It has only been 6 months since, following a diagnostic brain scan, he was deemed to have mixed Dementia - Frontal lobal with Alzheimers. At that time the Consultant thought DH was in late Middle Stage.

Last Wednesday was his final day of 6 months of once a week Day Therapy but we have been fortunate that he has been awarded a place in an Alzheimers run centre for a half day a week and we will have a trial run of respite care for 3 days towards the end of January. His general health remains excellent and he is generally quite content, loves his meals, TV, the DGC, though he frets endlessly about the wheelie bin rota, any card which dares to park in front of our house, his medication, what day and time it is, fiddles with the central heating and TV controls, switches things - cooker, fridges, computer, etc off at the main switch if he notices they are on checks the car 4 or 5 times daily and recently lost the ability to make himself a cup of tea, or heat soup in the microwave. He point blank refuses to go in the bath or shower but takes 1.5 hours to wash and shave at the sink every morning.

Anyway, ask any of our friends or DH's relatives and they will confirm that DH's 'Maw' was in all respects the 'Mother In Law from Hell. I could go on all day and night listing the family celebrations she ruined, the things she called me, the way she treated her DH (a lovely man) her son and our DDs. In fact last night and today I have been unable to get her misdeeds out of my head, having scarce given her a thought since she died. Now I feel that the fickle finger of fate has brought her back into the centre of our lives - that she has literally 'come back to haunt me'.

Granny23 I know you will have known this would come but it doesn't take away the shock and another bit of the continuing loss. I am so sorry. Is there anyway you can get a bit of time for yourself and be with someone you can have a 'normal' conversation with. This is so wearing for you. I know you will be taking care of yourself for your husbands sake but please do it for yours if it is possible.

How upsetting - I can't imagine how it must feel. Your world turned upside down.
Do you have support from anyone else in the family?