Update April 4th, 2013

Mom is starting to forget names occasionally.  She'll stop talking mid-sentence for a second and then say something.   For example, "How's ... ah... ah, your husband's work goin?"  

Dad said that Mom's heart was bothering her yesterday, and that she had to take a couple nitro tablets and stayed in bed most of the day (til 11:30), and even when she did get up, she didn't act like she felt really well.    Some days, she acts like she feels absolutely wonderful.  Her memory's good, she will be in good spirits and happy.  The next day, she can be ill as a hornet, convinced we're making her stay at someone else's home that she's working for (she sometimes thinks she's still working for home health care).   And she sees a crowd of people that are telling her who knows what.   I just really worry about the bad days.  I've heard from my brother that she has hit Dad, and I've known she's thrown stuff at him.  Some days, she's determined to leave the house, and walk "home", because she's not in her house.    Today she said she was trying to get someone headed that way to take her home.   Everyone had been telling her that she didn't need to get out in this icy mess.  We did have quite a bit of snow and sleet today, but it hasn't stuck any at all really here.  At least at our house, it's melted almost immediately because it's wet and rainy.   I didn't correct her to tell her that the roads weren't bad.  They need to stay inside as cold as it is, and if she gets a bee in her bonnet about it, she'll insist on Dad driving her around until she realizes that their house really is theirs.

Every evening they call about 5, and I could almost record my responses... LOL.  How are you doing?  (fine), The kids doing OK( Yes, they've been doing ...(insert whatever). all day today.   Are you guys doing OK?)  Yeah, yeah, ya momma is (doing ok, or mad at someone, or telling this)   Let me talk to the girls.  (Hey Poppa, (or Nanny).  Love you).  And the kids tell them all about their day.   The conversation is almost identical everyday.   Oh, and most of the time, they ask something about the weather, and then hang up.

Well, I've got to go cook something for dinner.

Updates thru March 18th, 2013

Mom was a bit irritable tonight.  When I talked to her, she asked me if her Mom had died.  Grandma died a couple years ago and I told her.  She asked me if she had given me money. "No Momma."  She went on to grumble about money, and how she didn't have anything, and she didn't know how she was going to pay all of her bills.  I tried to explain to her to not worry about it.  Sh that e then proceeded to tell me that "They had told her that she definitely had cancer."   I asked her who had told her, but she never would tell me.  The only thing I can think of is that she remembered where we had told her about Leila died of her cancer.

Yesterday, at Lydia's birthday party, Mom had a very had time even fixing herself a hot dog.  She got really irritated when someone tried to help her clean things up.  Dad told me today that when they were leaving church yesterday (evening?)  and it was like she had forgotten how to walk.  Mom is getting worse so quickly.  It's really scary.

March 12, 2013

First some updates, my husband's mom passed away on Thursday, and I haven't had the time or energy to do much here.  My Mom was pretty good up until the day of my Mother in law's funeral.  She and my Dad were going to go to the funeral, and she refused to get ready.  She said that "those people" had promised they would do this or that, and she was going to hold them to those promises.   Dad had pretty much given up on going, when all of a sudden, she said, "Joe, let's go!  We're going to be late!" and she let Dad help her get ready and they came in time for the family thing they had afterwards.   They didn't stay long, but they did get to meet some friends and family that they hadn't gotten to meet yet.

Today, Mom was having a major blowup.  She said that "George" had told her that Keith had signed a paper stating that he would buy "George" a house.  And that Daddy and my Uncle had went behind her back and borrowed $3000 - 3800 for it, and they couldn't afford the payment, etc.  She was VERY agitated  and nothing Dad could do would calm her down.  She finally started calming down after a couple hours.  I hope he was able to get her to take her meds.  I really don't see how Dad can put up with this.  I also don't think she recognized who I was when I talked to her on the phone.  Another step away...

I'm afraid that with her heart, she's going to work herself into a frenzy one of these days and she's going to give herself a heart attack.   These episodes are beginning to really get to my Dad.  He's even beginning to admit that she's starting to get more than he can handle.

Over the Weekend...

Mom was OK this weekend.   Phillip's mom is about to pass away, so I didn't spend as much time as usual. I stopped by for a minute, yesterday, and every time she heard a sound, she was going to the door to let "them people" in.    Other than her normal things, like Dad and Joe and seeing people, she had an OK weekend.  She got really mad at Daddy Sunday morning he said, but she calmed down in time for them to go to church.  

February 28th, 2013

Wednesday night, the kids and I went to visit Leila at the Hospice home in Dobson.  On our way back, we stopped by Mom and Dad's really quickly, and other than fairly minor stuff (Dad/Joe thing) she seemed to be doing well.  

Thursday, they stopped at the house for a few, because they got a thing in the mail that looked like a check, and Dad wanted to know if he could cash it.  I told him no, because it was just a thing where the "check" was a coupon for $$$ off of a yearly membership to a new health club opening in Dobson.   I looked at a couple other things he had, and they left.  That evening when they called, Mom seemed to be doing OK, other than the other people in the house, and she was fussing because she said Daddy never lets her do anything, but that's because he's tired of having to do everything over once she tries and then REALLY messes things up.  I feel so for my Dad.  He's such a loving man.   I know that soon I need to get with the rest of my family and talk about starting to look at homes.  She's slowly becoming more than my Dad can handle, but he doesn't want to admit it.  It cheered them up immensely when they talked to the kids.  

February 27,2013

We had a school thing for Lydia's class last night, and Mom and Dad tried calling while we were out, I think the battery in my phone was dead, so I didn't get a call from them.  This morning, I was a little worried, so I called them.  Dad said that this morning she's been really ill, saying that there were bugs everywhere and also that they were messing with some kids, so she was going to kill them.  She was going to get some spray and spray them bugs and kill them.  Dad said that she goes through one of her spells at least an hour or more everyday.  They asked about the kids, and the usual.  Dad said that they were going to go to the store soon to pick up some groceries.

February 25, 2013

We've been noticing signs of dementia in my mother for about 3 years.  It started with just asking the same things over, and over and over.  Then she was seeing little bugs in the flour and cornmeal.   We took her to the doctor, and they recommended seeing a specialist.  We thought, "OK, maybe we've caught it early enough that they can start prevention measures to keep it from getting worse."  They told us it was "Just part of getting older...".  We tried to tell them it seemed to be much more than that, but they wouldn't listen.  Mom was in her 2nd accident in less than a year.  We stressed to her that between her heart issues and back issues (and memory issues) that she really needed to stop working.  She did, thankfully, but was constantly trying to tell us she needed to go back to work.  It was a struggle for a while, and I eventually had to take over the mortgage on their home.  They had borrowed for this, and borrowed for that, and had racked up SO much debt.  Mom was also bad to send in for those work from home things that are more often than not a scam, and we went through their bank account, and cancelled over $400 a month that was getting drawn out in junk.  We were also able to pay down one of their credit cards, and got another stopped (because she couldn't go back to work) for a couple years, at least, and now they're paying on that one.   Mom and Dad both have a constant influx of medical bills.  Not so much for the hospital, but for the plethora of medicines that they need.  For conditions such as high cholesterol, high blood pressure, thyroid, etc.  Mom's also seeing a dementia specialist, who's added more medicines.  In the time since, we've had to take her to the hospital once, because she just was getting really bad, really quickly, and we were almost afraid she had had a stroke.  They wanted to commit her and evaluate her there, but we said no, so she came home.  She sees sometimes very frightening things, such as people made up of tiny little bugs.  The bugs come into the house through the tiniest of cracks, and once they are inside, they form people.  They tend to be Hispanic (the area that they live in is largely Hispanic now.)   Once inside, they do everything from make messes, she thinks she has to cook and feed them all, even down to seducing my Dad, right in front of my Mom.  She would sometimes take a knife from the kitchen, or scissors and try to hurt or cut these bug people.  That's when we took her to Forsyth Hospital.  The specialist has helped with this some, but the other people haven't completely gone away.  She sleeps much better now as well, because she takes sleeping pills every night.

I wanted to start keeping a blog, so that I can better track the things that Mom has said and done, at least the ones that I know of.  They call me daily, sometimes up to 3-4 times in a day.  This blog will hopefully let me have some insight that I can pass onto her dementia doctor and possibly keep track of other things that I hear from my Dad at later points, and from my brother and sister at later points.

Today when Mom and Dad called, Dad was cheerful as ever, and then passed me to Mom.  Mom seemed almost normal, then she started talking about the cleaning they had done today, "Cleaning up after all of those people."  She and Dad are the only ones in their home, but she remains convinced that a bunch of people are there, constantly destroying the house.  If anything she's the one that makes a mess, and then blames it on those people.  She's also been saying that my Dad and "Joe" (which is Dad's nickname) are two different people, and that my Daddy is gone most of the time.  She went on for a couple of minutes about how she couldn't understand why my Daddy didn't want to live with her anymore.  She said he would come by some days and stay for a few minutes, and then he would leave.  Most days she's also convinced she's at someone's house somewhere in the mountains.  Not today, thankfully.