Reply to Dementia Paranoia Directed at Me

Forum Index » Eldercare

Reply to "Dementia Paranoia Directed at Me"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The paranoia and bizarre accusations (in addition to nighttime wandering and other concerning behaviors like putting a plastic container of leftovers into the toaster oven) was why we placed my mom into memory care, 15 minutes away from us.  She had been living with us for two and a half months, and the behaviors became more than we could handle and were taking a toll on my mental and physical health.  She's follow me around the house and berate me, she accused us of trying to poison her and steal her money, she accused my husband of being lazy and unemployed (he is a systems engineer at Microsoft), she made up all sorts of awful things about my school-age kids and bullied them, and the list goes on.  It was awful.  Once we got her into assisted living, things improved because when she'd start in on me during a visit, I could end the visit and go home.

On occasion she'll still have bad days where she will call and scream her accusations at me, but I calmly tell her that I am ending the call and will talk to her later when she feels better. Logic doesn't work, and reasoning doesn't work.  It's a waste of time and will only agitate her further.  I've gotten good at the therapeutic lying about harmless things, but I agree with the OP when she says that she doesn't want to "play along" with the accusations.

It is a horrible disease, and for my mom the worst part is that she is physically perfectly healthy - it's just her mind that is breaking down.  On her more lucid days when she's aware of her cognitive decline, she laments on how she wishes she had cancer or some other physical disease rather than the dementia.   :( [/quote]

You capture so well everything. It's so much better when you know the person is somewhere else, safe and you can leave when the accusations and hostility come. I truly regret what I exposed my kids to and she wasn't even in our home. She just was rigid and entitled when it came to again in place because she buried her head in denial and visited less when her own parents declined.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics