I said, "Mom, I'm your daughter, we met in the hospital." She replied, "I know you're my daughter, but when did we first meet?" She was constantly afraid people were looking in the windows, hiding in the house, etc. I used to argue with her that it wasn't so, but she only got upset with me. Thanks to many books, I learned not to try to set her straight, but to change the subject.
Mom always liked to sew and to keep her busy I'd give her an assortment of buttons and ask her to put all the blue ones in this box, the red ones in that box, etc. I also gave her a bunch of fabric scraps and asked her to sort them into fluffy and plain and silky. That exercise didn't get far because I had a piece of faux fur in the pile and once she found it, she just sat and petted it. She thought it was her cat.
I learned a lot in the 3 years mom had extended Alzheimers. She tended to blame others for things she'd done, for she didn't remember doing them. One morning she pooped all over the bathroom floor and told me the neighborhood kids had come in and made the mess.
She hid her wedding rings and claimed they'd been stolen. My sisters and I searched for months on end and couldn't find them. One day the nurse we'd hired to help care for her found them inside a flower vase. Alzheimer's people hide everything so nobody can get it. They are suspicious of everyone and everything.
My mom insisted my dad was living with a prostitute and they had kids. Dad had died 3 years earlier. She claimed he had pretended to be dead so he could live with this woman. One day she called my sister and told her to come fast because dad had hired someone to kill her and she'd seen the guy outside with a rife.
When my dad was nearing the end of his life, at 89, mom was his caregiver. We three girls knew she had some kind of dementia and I questioned if mom should be in charge of taking care of dad. She gave him his meds and I thought she wasn't capable of that job. After he died, we were told that they had found all kinds of meds in his stomach, meds that hadn't been perscribed for him. We never told anyone that mom had killed dad by trying to care for him when her mind was in the process of leaving her. The hired nurse was a godsend because she took over dad's care, but it was too late. The damage had been done.
All of this to say, the ministry you're going into is a huge one and much needed. As the child of an Alzheimer patient, I thank you for the job you're taking on. I'm not Mormon but I am a Christ follower, and if you would like to ask any questions from someone who has lost a parent to this horrible disease, just ask away.
In Christ,
Sandy
