Mom has a creeping form of dementia. She is fine in so many ways, but those darn frontal lobes just seem to be MIA. She makes bad decisions, she's lonely, and she just writes checks for all the wrong reasons.
We noticed that she was in trouble only after she lost her house to the bank. She was always too busy to visit, too busy to talk, too involved in her tour business. I watched her at the ATM and realized that my smart mom had suddenly become unable to operate an ATM. I easily gave her a pass on that because I am often befuddled at new gas station ATM machines. Machines are new and improved faster than my neurons can dance. I get it. But this was different.
When she lost her house, she seemed to be in denial. My brother and I went down to sort things out. She was angry, yelled at us, and got easily frustrated. It was sort of like the time she had early throat cancer and couldn't speak for 6 weeks. She sounded like a mouse and we did everything we could to press her buttons to hear her screech. This time, it was too easy to press her buttons, and too easily was she she pushed to cry. Something was terribly wrong.
After the move, the storage units, the overwhelming upstairs room full of boxes, I took her to a neurological wizard. He warned of nerve damage, and there were problems with her white matter. He said she had damage to her spine, but the amounts of white matter and the reduced blood flow would continue to erode her brain function. We saw him in Southern California, and we haven't gone back. A new doctor, Dr. Bhat, seemed to be oblivious to her squirrelly brain, but he did prescribe Arecept and Namenda, both are medicines for Alzheimer's or Dementia.
She has lived in the new place for a few years, loses track of time, doesn't pay any bills, has a pill reminder, doesn't clean, has a place full of rotten food and fleas, no longer walks her dogs, imagines that she is ok, and gets dizzy when she stands. She doesn't bathe so often, and she repeats herself all day.
She looks disheveled, her hair is a mess, she imagines she has contact lenses and needs drops, but has never worn contacts in her life. She is currently in my garage conversion room, her new room, but often doesn't remember where she is or how she got here. She thinks her dogs are in distress and wants to administer enemas. Enemas. What is it with the 1950's that made adults want to solve all health problems with anal washes?
She is sure that suppositories and enemas will make her dog feel better. There is a partially used bottle on her bathroom counter last time I checked.
Her dog has fleas. I treated it with flea meds twice in two weeks and it is now flea free. Still, mom insists on giving it baby aspirin. She would love to give it an enema again, but I won't let her.
Tomorrow, she and I will leave my house with her dogs, drive 300 miles, go to her house where my daughter and her husband have just cleaned her carpet, and she will see her doctor for approval of her next cataract surgery. It is scheduled September 10th. She is to move in right after the surgery.
She has a room, but I don't know how to keep her asleep through her 4 times of waking up with the dogs and yelling at them as if she was on the prairie with no neighbors. I don't know how to get her not to knock on my bedroom door, over and over to ask simple questions while we are sleeping, or walking in on my husband in the bathroom. Her ideas of personal space, boundaries, and mores, are gone. She is a lot like an innocent child who follows free will without the burden of forethought.
How do I protect the sanity of my husband while fielding mom's needs?
I am not sure, but mom is losing it.
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