How mum’s dementia affected the family

Sandra, your mum had dementia and that was a you know a clinical problem for her. What effect did it have on you as a family? To begin with not a lot because she sort of coped pretty well but as the stage has gone on it got more and more difficult. She liked to have a drink which was fine you know mum liked to have a drink. As she started getting worse, she drank more. And that's only because she forgot she had a drink. So quite a few times, she'd be drunk. And then we would get told off because she was under a doctor for her dementia. And they would tell us off. And And I would say, well, she likes a drink. But then we had to then monitor that, sort that out, so that she only had it a little bit like that in a great big thing of water. But she didn't do it on purpose. And then, that's one thing you've got to look at. Then you've got to look at her eating. And then as it progressed, as it got worse, she started Walkabout, so she would go missing. Or she'll go out in a pair of slippers and a petticoat and it's stages, it is, it's very slow but it's stages. So as you get through one stage, you've got another stage to cope with. But it didn't affect you as a family too much in the first, you know, the first half of the illness. It affected you more probably when she came back from hospital and she was very dependent. The last time, before she died, was the most horrendous. I wouldn't wish that on anybody. And I was angry at the time because of the treatment. And in hindsight, I can look back and think, well, maybe it wasn't really their fault. It was their lack of communication. If you communicate with the family, the family can help. They can come in and do things to help out. Physically, on you as a person, I think it had a significant toll on you, didn't it? Yes, it did. You were looking after mum a lot and lost a lot of weight. Every day. Every day I looked after mum and then eventually when she had the fall in the bathroom, I called the ambulance. They wouldn't take her in. I had the ambulance out three times, they wouldn't take her in. And the last time they took her in she was in a, I think she was set to see in his setting. You know. And they did everything they could then. They were really good at that point because they tried everything to make her better but she died. In some ways it was a good release for her because she d had enough. She d had enough pulling around. And she was tired. She didn't want to be here. She hated it. And the moments of when she would remember things, she would actually say, I don't want to be here. But they were short-lived. The communication was really short-lived.