Advice When Caring for An Alzheimer's Patient
I am the daughter and sole caretaker for my mother with Alzheimer’s. When I first began taking care of Mother, I thought I knew what the course of this journey would be like; I was mistaken. I moved home in 2009 to help her care for my father. He had dementia, heart disease, and black lung from over 49 years of working in the coal mines of Alabama. It was all too much for her to handle alone. Daddy passed in 2009. Immediately after he passed mother began to change drastically. I thought it was just grief from losing the only man she ever loved. Turned out she had some pretty vicious diabetes raging. I began taking her to the Doctor. Over the course of the next few years, I would tell the Doctor on our visits that something just wasn’t right with mother. She seemed to be having issues remembering names and struggling to remember paying bills. She insisted that my taking the bills to pay each month was none of my business. She used to say,” I can still handle my own business without you.” Her temper flair with a regularity that you could almost clock. It seemed to coincide with the first week of the month; just in time for the bills to be paid. I know now that she was struggling to the point that the frustration was exacerbating the disease. She was making risky decisions with the finances. I came home from errands one day to find a man I did not know, looking under our house for snakes…
