boomerblog

Things get crazy when your aging parents lose their marbles. I received a call from an old friend who was describing her fate in dealing with her mom and her memory loss. The problem is excruciating because one minute her mom would be there conversing with her and offering motherly advice and the next minute she’d become like another person—not remembering or relating to the previous conversation.

Attempts to bring these space dwellers back to earth often fail. They sure did when I was dealing with my own mom. Nothing could convince her that the bank wasn’t really stealing her money, or that my brother-in-law really didn’t have a secret key to her apartment.

Yet coming to grips with your own denial and overcoming the horrors of stigma surrounding dementia are the starting steps to helping your aging parent with their little irreversible problem. Sometimes it helps to talk with others who’ve been down that path. They can walk you around the potholes and make you laugh along the way.

If you suspect that your aging parent is getting “strange” in your presence and don’t know what to do, please read the story “Dementia Symptoms in Aging Parents” at
http://www.boomer-books.com/dementia/dementia.html.

It’ll give you some advice on dealing with dementia and keeping your own sanity through out the process.

It also contains a checklist that you can download and use to evaluate for yourself if your aging parent is suffering from dementia

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 3rd, 2005 at 8:19 am and is filed under Aging Parents. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.