You look after your Mom. She has dementia. She's not too hard to look after yet and your family are supportive. Overall, things are going fairly smoothly. If you were truthful though, you'd say the thing that she does that really makes you crazy is -- she tells lies. Yes, that woman who'd punish you for lying as a child, she lies all the time. When Doug, your brother far away in South Dakota, phones to talk to her, you hear your Mom, lying to him.
"Oh yes, honey, I'm fine. Yes, I went out to lunch today with my friends. Uh-huh, yes, yesterday I went shopping. Oh no, honey, I'm doing fine."
\"make Up\"
Just like Wonder Woman, you want to cross the kitchen in a single bound and bop your mother on the head and hiss, "Stop that lying right now! Go to your room!"
But you mustn't. No, what you must do is to bring that fine understanding of yours to your mother's dementia. Dementia means having very seriously fractured short term memory, plus inability to think in rational step-by-step process, plus difficulty in following logic and pattern. This is due to the many roadblocks in the brain created by the plaques and tangles of physical deterioration.
These difficulties mean feeling very unsafe and insecure. Ask yourself, how would it be to genuinely have no idea what you did yesterday? To not know where you'd been, what you'd been doing. Think about how many suspense movies are made from that very theme -- usually the person who wakes up in a hotel room in an unknown town with no memory even of who he is. Not remembering on a large scale is very frightening. To feel secure under those circumstances is almost impossible.
Moreover, to be honest, it asks we caregivers to be accepting and not accusing, forgiving and not angry. When people afraid to admit they don't know anything about yesterday, they are most likely to draw upon their own life pattern. The further back memory goes, the more they'll be able to draw upon. From those old habits, they'll make yesterday. Don't think they're lying. Think they're seeking peace instead of constant fear.
If they invent wildly, we could accept that as a rich fantasy life. In the same way that children create from their imagination things that comfort them -- imaginary friends, talking toads. Think of your mother as having imaginary friends who comfort her in the losses and insecurities of her life now she's ill. Usually when we caregivers get mad at someone with dementia, it's because we've put ourselves on the opposite side from them. That happens for all kinds of reasons -- lack of sleep, dislike of Mama, fear of dementia.
If we try to stand by the person we care for, actually we both feel better. Remember, you may be struggling with your pity, grief and fear AND a family member's dementia. That doesn't mean that family member is living a sorrowful or painful life. In fact, an average day with dementia can be fun. Especially if you were fun. Deal with your issues, so you can help them with their issues. That's what we caregivers do.
Why Does Dementia Mom Make Up Stories?
Frena Gray-Davidson is a longterm Alzheimer's caregiver and her latest book is "Alzheimer's 911: Hope, Help and Healing for Caregivers", available from http://www.amazon.com. Frena presents dementia seminars nationally and internationally. Go to her website at [http://www.alzguide.com/] and sign up for her free monthly online newsletter for caregivers. Email her at frenagd@gmail.com