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.