How it all started

Let me start by saying I'm not a writer, I ramble a lot and get off track sometimes when telling a story. I have talked to many people about dementia and most people have heard of it, but have no idea what it is like to live with a person who has it and deal with it every day. So I thought I would share what my days have been like since living with a person with dementia.  I'm not going to use any real names in this ongoing story, rather than names I'll be using their place in the family in place of names. 

                                       So this is my brain dump.

 My mother-in-law was diagnosed with early-onset dementia in her late 50s to early 60s. She lived seventy miles from us at that time. 

   When we noticed she started having trouble paying bills and having no food in the house because she did not want to spend money on anything she was in her late 70s. We started sending her food deliveries from one of her local grocery stores.

By the time she was in her early 80s, She was dirty all the time, not bathing or washing her clothes, when we would go see her on the weekends, we did our best to see her every other week, and she would have all her mail laid out on the kitchen table all spread out in piles. We started to notice the piles were getting bigger. and started looking closer most had balances on them to where she had overpaid them some by thousands of dollars. She had by this time was always complaining she was cold all the time and would set her air conditioner on 80 or 85 which turned the heat on in the middle of the summer in FLORIDA. That is when I started going up once a week to check on her and take her to lunch and shopping. I also started taking her to the doctor when I found out she was not going, after a few conversations with her doctor that's when I started my education on dementia. I started asking her if she would like to come stay with her son and me, but she was not interested at all in that idea. 

    My husband and I talked it over and thought it would be a good idea to finish the kitchen in a home we had bought to use as a rental in our neighborhood to move her into. She was not safe that far away and on her own. I had big concerns about her still driving. 

    My husband was keeping his brothers updated on her and we planned to try to bring her down to live near us. Everyone agreed it sounded like a good thing to do. She would be closer to us and I would only be two blocks away instead of 70 miles. She is now 83 years old.

    As luck would have it just as we had finished the work on the house and her truck broke down. I got an early morning phone call from her telling me someone had stolen her truck. She had no idea where it was, she was sure she drove it home from the bar last night. I told her I would be right up to find out what was going on. when I got to her house I called the bar she regularly went to they informed me her truck would not start last night and one of her friends took her home. The gentleman happened to be a mechanic and had it towed to where he worked the next day. After spending most of the day with her I knew she would not be safe living alone.  I called and told him our plans to bring her to live with us and asked the mechanic not to give her back the car he was happy to help and he told her he had to order a part to fix the truck and it may be a few weeks before it would be ready. We had one of her neighbors checking in on her and I went up a few times a week, I should mention I worked from and the 70 miles took two hour one way up a very busy us 19.

    Two of her sons devised a plan to move her in by us. 

Her oldest son would come down from South Carolina and help my husband get her things moved here to the new house. My job was to figure out what to bring what to leave behind and what to take care of later. Then I had to keep her entertained for 6 to 7 hours while they packed up the trailer and unloaded it in the new home for her. let me tell you it was not a fun day. 

more to come .....