Dementia diagnosis for Mum, now what?

Jaxjacky

Do you have Power of Attorney Pammie1?

Yes, I’m lasting power of attorney and hospital and GP surgery have copies, but so far doesn’t seem to make much difference when it comes to addressing mail to her, even though I’ve stressed to both that if she opens it before I get to it, whatever’s in it could be missed because she tries to hide everything !!

I saw the GP on Monday and mentioned this, and the fact that whenever there was telephone contact they were still insisting on getting permission from mum before speaking to me. She confirmed they had the LPA on record and said she’ make sure phone calls and mail are directed to me. It’s more difficult with the hospital because mum is under several different clinics and they don’t seem to have joined the dots !!

The dementia specialist nurse from the surgery came out to see mum last week. It was described as an ‘annual review’ which made me laugh, because she was diagnosed three years ago and this is the first time anyone has ever been out from the surgery !! It was actually just a box ticking exercise to update their records, but he insisted on addressing his questions to mum, even though I showed him the LPA and warned him that mum wasn’t having a good day. It took twice as long to get through it as mum was clearly confused and I had to keep jumping in to give the right information. Mum does still have capacity on her good days, but this wasn’t one of them and the LPA didn’t seem to mean much. Exasperating sometimes.

My mother had Alzheimer's and Dad tried to keep her at home as long as possible, (with family help), but it reached the point where she had to go into a care home. Social Services were worse than useless, and Aricept did nothing for her.

Her condition rocketed downwards very quickly.

She died of Pneumonia in the care home, which was a relief, to be honest.

Then my Dad contracted Vascular Dementia, and again, we tried to keep the show on the road, but, inevitably, he ended up in a nursing home. He died of Covid during lockdown.

These illnesses drag the life and joy out of everything. You end up mourning the person you knew, long before they die.

Just try and source help - I had to fight every inch of the way to get help from agencies.

I am sorry you had this experience, diamondlily.

It is difficult to tell whether Aricept is working as it only slows the progress and, of course, no one knows how fast the decline might have been without it.

Everyone's dementia journey is different.