After reading Kay Bransfords blog I don’t understand why you are so upset today, I responded with my own feelings about dementia, and whether a PWD can cause others to feel duress. In reality, no-one cannot cause another person to respond or react a certain way. You cannot cause a healthy person to respond or react a certain way. We react a certain way usually because we have not thought to react another way, a knee-jerk reaction. PWD often behave as a way to communicate when they can’t find the words.
The trauma we all feel after a diagnosis of dementia in a family, and the emotional responses we all have, including the devastating grief and loss everyone feels, not just the person diagnosed, can hinder our ability to react anything other than from our heart, and in a knee-jerk way. Logic and clarity goes out the window, as our individual anguish clouds our reactions. No-one can make me sad or happy. It used to be 100% up to me… sadly the symptoms of dementia do sometimes prevent me from having that control.
This is my comment to Kays blog today:
“These are just my feelings and thoughts… from the other side of the fence.
I’m not sure your parents have enough awareness or insight to be consciously pushing you away. In a recent blog I recall you said your fathers Alzheimer’s dementia was more advanced than your mums dementia? Due to their short term memory loss, they probably won’t remember this latest ‘incident’.
Even though you see random shining moments of insight from one or both of them occasionally… don’t hold onto these, don’t hope they will return more often. They probably won’t.
Your duress is understandable, as is your feeling troubled by the thought they might be trying to get you to walk away. These are just my thoughts: Their behaviour is not directed at you personally, even though it feels that way. Their ‘behaviours’ are in some way trying to communicate their absolute displeasure at having to live with the symptoms of dementia. Each ‘behaviour’ is trying to tell you something.
I strongly believe that deep inside they are still the parents who love you.
But the symptoms of dementia, caused by damage to various parts of their brain, is changing their responses and behaviour. If they were cranky because they were dying of cancer, and the treatment had changed their behaviours, you might find it easier to just love them they way they are? They do have possibly the worst terminal illness there is. It is not just a physical disease, it is also stealing their soul.
In some ways, I see it almost steals the souls of the people who love us, as we drift away from being the people you once knew. Have a look at my YouTube clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZUyIRq5DAs to see what it feels like being diagnosed with dementia, and going into aged care. Every older person I have shown it to feels exactly the same. Having dementia is terrifying, going into assisted living is devastating.
Take some time out for yourself, spend some time with your husband and kids, lick your wounds… refresh your soul.
Try to let go of the deep desire their ‘old selves’ will come back. They have changed, and you can only accept it. They may not even be aware of how much they have changed. Try not to blame them for your own hurt and the perceived inconvenience you feel they are ‘causing’. We all change, every day.”
