Anyone dealt with dementia?
I’m laying in bed with my daughter sleeping on my lap and my grandmother calls me. She’s hysterical, telling me she trapped in my house and no one is home but something happened to my dad and he’s not okay and they need help.
I know she’s safe in her bed at the hospital right now, but they never get easier. My grandmother has always been my most supportive and trusted person in my whole life, and so it’s hard to see such a strong woman lose herself. I don’t know what to do in these moments, and I kind of shut down. She calls me at least once a week. Sometimes she tells me she’s holding my baby and asks when I’m coming to get her, as my daughter who is now five plays on the carpet in front of me. Sometimes she screaming at the nurses about the 100 cats she sees in her room, and she thinks they’re pranking her. Sometimes she sits on the couch for hours talking to her dead husband.
I just wanted to see if anyone else has been through this with someone they’re extremely close to, and how you managed to stay strong for them? I kind of freeze, but I want to be able to help her. I know I’ll never get better, but I’d like her to remember I was there as much as she can.
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My grandma had Alzheimer's. The best thing you can do is just let them live their reality. In the later stages, trying to reorient them to our reality only makes them more afraid.
My grandmother had alzheimers and dementia and she called saying to get all the kids out of her house but there were no kids in her house. And she told me there were 3 women living in her house and that they were staying from her. There were no women in her house and there was not anything in the house that didn't b bringing to my grandma, no second toothbrush and no extra clothes that I didn't recognize, nothing. It's really sad. She was always super smart and very aware but the last 10 years of her life she did not know what was going on or what reality is. I run care if her for the last 4 years is her life. She owned a duplex and I lived on the other side of her.
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