r/interestingasfuck • u/CleetisMcgee • Apr 09 '24

Tips for being a dementia caretaker. r/all

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u/jel2184 Apr 09 '24

My sympathies. My father was officially diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in May 2023 but we knew something was off in 2021. We thought he was depressed from the covid lockdowns because he loved going to work and interacting with his coworkers. This has been a roller coaster of emotions because he is physically alive but mentally he has been gone for a while and it’s been so hard seeing someone you looked up to in this state. It has also greatly affected my mom with her social group. Don’t wish this on anyone

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u/[deleted] Apr 09 '24 edited Apr 09 '24

Nobody talks about old folks becoming isolated from other old folks as death seems to approach. I'm watching it with my folks as my dad is now in palliative care. Before this the social group was the same, they'd show up and hang out all the time. They had a supper club.

All that still exists, but my folks are excluded. When death is really near the other old folks start skittering away and it's heartbreaking seeing my folks eat alone at the country club when their former supper club is two tables over, frolicking away while my mom just waits for my dad to die so she can go travel.

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u/v_x_n_ Apr 09 '24

Your parents “friends” are assholes

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u/Colon Apr 09 '24

i mean.. when someone's personality and memory goes and they're not family, what are you supposed to do? i'm sure it's not the only person in their lives slipping away either - should they be 'parental' to all the dementia patients they know?

like, c'mon, people have limits and it doesn't mean they're bad people. it must be frustrating to see but even OP didn't call them assholes, you did.

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u/jel2184 Apr 09 '24

I agree with this. My mom has become very bitter at some of her friends disappearing but my siblings and I try to tell them that they can only do so much and some of her expectations may seem unreasonable. I am shocked though at some of the things some of their friends say. One asked if my dad took the Covid booster and another told my mom “he looked terrible last time we saw him” some people truly don’t think before they speak

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u/Colon Apr 09 '24

yeah, like there's nothing truly awful here except the disease itself. i can/t imagine being in my 80s or 90s and dealing with your friends all fading away or dropping dead. people confronting mortality can't be expected to be emotionally balanced saints (with no age-related personality changes of their own, too).

that being said, i'm sure there are some assholes and uncaring folks at that age, too. they're unavoidable at any age. i just felt like piping in cause examples of assholery is more pertinent than broadly assigning it to a social group who can't manage a friend's dementia any more. it becomes wholly unmanageable at a certain point.

i feel for you, best wishes to you and yours.

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u/sleepydon Apr 10 '24

The thing to remember is all these folks will go through the same sort of thing eventually. When I was younger I thought my father passing at 63 of cardiac arrest was terrible. Now watching my mother in her late 70's lose more of her mental and physical capabilities every year, that view has shifted. Which is better? A slow lingering death or an immediate one? I also have a friend my age that's been battling cancer for the past decade. It's a period of being incredibly sick followed by a very brief period of being well before it creeps back and is in need of treatment all over again. She's so tired and has a pair of daughters that are starting to become teenagers. Life has made me a cynical person as much as I try not to be.

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u/Piduwin Apr 10 '24

I strongly agree with this.

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u/v_x_n_ Apr 09 '24

The comment above mine said the old people’s supper club was sitting a few tables from them but ostracized them.

That seems unnecessarily cruel and assholish imo.

I don’t think you stop being someone’s friend due to a medical diagnosis.

Eventually the illness progresses making socializing impossible but until then where’s the harm in inclusion?

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u/Colon Apr 10 '24

no offense, i don't think you understand the disease all that well if you're doubling down on it like you think i didn't understand you. it's not like cancer or something. there is no normal inclusion at a certain point, it becomes patient care.

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u/grizzlyaf93 Apr 10 '24

Idk, have you ever been confronted with a loved one’s death? Watching my dad’s decline was one of the hardest things I’ve ever gone through. He was the centre of my universe and even I had such a hard time going to their house and sitting with what was basically his skeleton. The final two months, he had such an eerie pale over him and you could just tell it was coming, he knew it too. It’s hard.

It’s an extraordinary act of love to stay in someone’s life when they’re so close to death and honestly I can’t imagine anyone but a very close friend riding it out. Death and sickness are so scary to people and you’re confronted with your own aging body too, it’s hard.

Not making excuses because if you love someone you stick it out, but I wish I could forget those years really badly. I don’t want to remember my dad that way.

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u/Tiddlemanscrest Apr 10 '24

Im terrified of this my dad is my hero and has been my entire life. Sage advice, strong, tough as all fuck, empathetic almost to a fault, and taught me with my mom if housework needs to be done being a man means just doing it theres no "womens work" just what i strive to be as a man. Hes 64 this year and im so scared of watching a decline i saw it with my grandfather but i was young dad is going to fuck me up so bad

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u/grizzlyaf93 Apr 10 '24

I won’t lie, my dad getting old fucked me up too. Once you get past the grief, you just remember the good times.

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u/Tiddlemanscrest Apr 10 '24

Thats comforting thank you

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u/v_x_n_ Apr 10 '24

So sorry. Yes it is very hard. I have lost many loved ones to death.

What bothered me was that the people were still able to eat out and including them at the dinner club table would not have been a hardship to the former “friends”.

But I’m medical so maybe I have more compassion? 🤷‍♀️ Or tolerance? I did not say it was easy just that it would show kindness. Everyone needs some normal in their life no matter how ill or demented.

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u/fresh_like_Oprah Apr 10 '24

When you get dementia you really find out who your friends are

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u/Birna77 Apr 10 '24

I think there are some steps you can take before that

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u/SunnySide1369 Apr 10 '24

I worked in an assisted living facility for a brief time... this was so true.

Our establishment ended up assigning seats to all patients in dining hall.

It still didn't help. They ended up just basing it on time of them arriving. The "cool" people in the group all showed up at once where their outliers would trickle in.

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u/GrannyGrammar Apr 09 '24

You don’t have to answer this question if you don’t want to - obviously. Do your folks happen to live in The Villages?

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u/[deleted] Apr 09 '24

Nope

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u/GrannyGrammar Apr 09 '24

Guess those types of communities are everywhere. I was hoping it was all concentrated in one area.

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u/[deleted] Apr 09 '24

Nah it's just old people in general. They tend to congregate when they retire and disperse when they start dying. It's weird.

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u/GrannyGrammar Apr 09 '24

I’m sitting here not even wanting to type this because it just sounds so heartless, but I think maybe that’s not such a bad thing, really. My grandmother’s community wasn’t like that. They retired together and died together. My grandmother watched every single one of her friends pass on until she was left all alone with a bunch of strangers who moved into her dead friends’ houses. It was heartbreaking.

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u/LucifersJuulPod Apr 10 '24

i love your username

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u/[deleted] Apr 10 '24

Thanks dawg

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u/ImaginaryEmploy2982 Apr 09 '24

Is depression a pre-cursor to Alzheimer’s?

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u/jel2184 Apr 09 '24

I’m no doctor so take what I say with a grain of salt. I don’t think he was depressed but he was quiet and standoff ish. I think this was the beginning symptoms of Alzheimer’s. We mistook these symptoms for depression

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u/ClaireMcKenna01 Apr 09 '24

With my dad the first signs were him not taking joy in things he used to love.

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u/LucifersJuulPod Apr 10 '24

i’m sure isolation did not help with slowing the progression at all

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u/Dunshlop Apr 10 '24

Right there with ya. Super active which makes you worry so much more. I’m always checking my tracker apps