One thing about this group, if you think you got problems you can always
find that others have it just as bad and sometimes worse.   As bad as this
disease is for my mother and my family, I can see others who are struggling
with far more difficult situations.   No, it doesn't make me feel any better
about it but at least I can be thankful I'm not as bad off as I thought I
was.   Maybe it's like another one of my Mom's sayings: "If your troubles
were on the shelf with everybody else's troubles,  you would invariably pick
your own."

My son told me the other day that his landlord who is 46 just put both his
parents in a NH with dementia.   They're in their mid 60's.

Perhaps we should write down now how we would want to treated if we were to
get dementia.   I have a living will and this would be something I could put
with it.   Save my kids some of the heartache.

Just rambling on here..........

Yeah. Hope she comes here. I mostly lurk but this is a good place.
I take care of my 3 y.o. granddaughter a lot of the time while my daughter
attends college. As Mom has gotten worse we hired a live in
housekeeper/momma watcher. Since I am an R.N. we don't need a nursing home,
this IS a nursing home, but I did need an employee :).

I have spent more time out of the house with the little one lately. And in
my support groups. It's all good. This is a hard row to hoe.

Evelyn Ruut <mama-lionsox@hvc.rr.com> is alleged to have said:

Well, congratulations all round, to him and his bride and to you.
It's nice to be reminded that life goes on as well as ending.

I'm glad I wasn't the one to talk to her, because I'd probably have
tried to talk her out of it.  I had to live with my demented grandfather
from the time I was 5 to about 12, when he went into the nursing home.
He was a constant misery to live with, never having been a very nice
man in the first place (which is why my 2 aunts skedaddled and left him
for my parents to take care of).  He also drank, especially when I was
youngest and he was still pretty mobile.

He was supposed to make my lunch (the school was across the street)
and watch me from the time I got out of school until my Mom got home
from work, about 1-1/2 hours.  Some days he would just go to the bar
and I would be locked out of the house.  I remember one day taking a
crap in the alley because I was too embarrassed to ask one of my
friends if I could use their bathroom.

He used to tease and harrass me, too, until one day when I threw a
phone book at him and hit him in the leg.  Drew a small amount of blood,
caused uproar.  But he backed off.  At some point I tried to live the
lessons I was learning in Sunday School and hug my dear grandfather.
You know, like Heidi and her grandfather.  He tried to molest me.  This
was the 50's and trust me, there was no talk of "good touch" and "bad
touch" to kids.  I didn't understand but knew something bad had
happened -- fortunately he couldn't get it up any more -- and I never
told anyone until years later.  When I mentioned it to the girls next
door, one said "oh, he tried that with everyone," so I guess he had.
And no one said anything.  When people say the 50's were better than
today, so innocent and moral, I laugh in their faces.

By the time he went to the nursing home, I thoroughly hated him.  When
he died, when I was about 15, I felt nothing.

If I complained, my parents would talk about him being senile and
having "hardening of the arteries," and that I should just shrug it
off.  That's always been my mother's style, but all the upset cost her
something too -- an ulcer.  And knowing it didn't stop my Dad from
having loud arguments with him.  Because my parents didn't change the
situation, I took it as somehow my fault that he treated me that way.
Kids often do that.

Now I'm middle aged and my mother's old and demented and I'm reliving
the nightmare.  But there are no children here.  I know some won't agree
with me, but I wouldn't bring a person with dementia into a house with
pre-teen kids.  I hope your hairdresser's mother-in-law is just B12
deficient or something that can be remedied.  If they can afford to
remodel their house, they can afford assisted living for grandma, and
they really should consider it.

Like Jo Ann, I'd probably have tried to talk her out of it!

As Evelyn notes, my MILs dementia started to brew just before we had
our first child, and we had three born over the years she was living
her nightmare. When she died from AD, our kids were 8, 5 and 1. In our
situation, we couldn't have taken her to live with us without moving
entirely, as her knees were shot so she couldn't do stairs, and we
lived in a multi-level house - but that aside, I could no more have
looked after her properly AND three young children than flown to the
moon by flapping my arms. I do know my limits - especially knowing what
I know now about Alzheimer's (i.e. in general, no matter how bad you
think it is now, it gets worse). Even maintaining her in her apartment,
and then in assisted living was a challenge for us in those hectic
years we all go through with babies and toddlers around (i.e. the
endless phone calls from her and with various agencies, doctors etc.,
the trips over there to deal with everything from small emergencies to
big disasters, the chauffeuring, the arranging, the running of errands,
the shopping etc. etc.

Like Jo Ann, my take is that my young dependent children have to come
first on my list, and that just won't fly with the kind of caregiving
demands of looking after someone with progressive dementia. There is a
joke about being a super woman that says you make a list of what you
want to be good at....good mother, good employee, good wife, good
social life - okay, so pick three, because you won't be able to do them
all. If you are adding good caregiver to the list, the tradeoffs are
even harder.

It also worries me when someone invests in major renovations before
before they have the experience of caregiving for someone with
dementia. Not that you can really appreciate that whole scene until you
go there!

I have dear friends who contemplated a big reno to take in his mother,
and fortunately, the emergency nature of taking her in prevented them
from spending the money up front (elderly father died very suddenly,
the old couple had lived in an isolated rural area where driving was
necessary and the mother had never driven, never mind that she was in
poor health, almost blind, and was in early dementia). My friend is a
very idealistic woman, and her kids were older than the lady Evelyn
encountered, and even so, in very short order, it was apparent this
wasn't going to work, even though she had a very hard time admitting
that.  My friend had always gotten along with her MIL, but had never
lived with her - MIL was unhappy and felt dependent and like a burden
(and thus was querilous, demanding, peevish etc.), my friend was
unhappy, the kids were unhappy (tension in the house was crackling) and
her hubbie, the hapless son, was miserable and tortured since he had it
in his head that moving his mother to assisted living was like checking
her into a POW camp.  Nice place was found near where they lived,
mother went there....and LOVED it. Loved the social life and the better
opportunities for activities and outings, felt less dependent, everyone
much happier.

Can you imagine if they'd invested big in the reno they originally
envisioned? It would have made the commitment even bigger and coming
around to trying out Plan B even harder.

Mary G.
(kids now 14, 11 and 7...and I still couldn't take on full time
caregiving to someone with AD....I think you'd need to have no kids in
the house, or at least have the kids be grown up to even give it a
realistic go).