So much damage

One of the things I have learned from being with my mother at this time, is that dementia harms more than just the person who has it.  And oh, how it damages them!  My mother's dementia probably started as long time ago as 10 or 15 years; and so much of what we have taken for granted about her for all this time was probably the result of the dementia unrecognised.  I can remember saying to people that my mother seemed to have lost a lot of her filters and put it down to growing older and being less willing to be tolerant.  She used racist language that I would never have heard from her when she was younger.  Moreover, she became far more critical of both family and friends, and people she encountered in the street.  If she felt someone was over weight, she said something about it and sometimes, she was quite cruel.  It seemed that those thoughts she would once have kept to herself, were now to be spoken aloud.

I have heard that a number of her grand children have been quite upset by her words and actions.  I don't think the she will ever have the opportunity to mend these relationships.  It is even possible that she forgets who they are as she has forgotten me.  However, perhaps one day they will come to understand that it was all part of the dementia and that she would be devastated if she realised what she had done.

Again it's been a long time

The title says it all and I won't add to that.  I have picked this blog up again because it seems to do me a lot of good writing here in times of stress.  I started it originally as a way of communicating with friends and family when I was diagnosed with cancer in 2006.  Now I think I will be using it to help me cope with living with my mother, who has dementia, during the  Covid-19 lockdown.

It has been very difficult.  I think that is one of the biggest understatements I have ever made.  I have even lost track of how long I have been here. I arrived in Thetford just days prior to the lockdown in late March when my mother's part-time carer had to self-isolate due to illness in the family.  I am still here and likely to be so for at least another 3 weeks.