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And the Academy Award goes to... Pretender

Caregivers: Dementia | Last Active: Feb 7 8:10am | Replies (54)

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Profile picture for Teri @tsc

Hi @judimahoney, I'm not much of a pretender. I try to be as gracious as I can be. My husband does the dishes and puts things away in strange places, but there's no point in telling him where they go because he can't remember anyway. That brings some peace.
I do stand up for myself, though. He has no impulse control and when he wants me to attend to something (often ridiculous) immediately, I tell him it's inconvenient, I'm in the middle of something, etc. He usually doesn't relent, but I get those feelings off my chest.
He hates the music I listen to or certain tv programs, but he leaves the room. I now understand the meaning of "killjoy."
Somedays he's in the fridge every five minutes. Trying to keep him from eating all day is pretty exhausting (he's put on some weight and was prediabetic).
Every day at 5pm he starts a minute by minute countdown to dinner. I tell him how annoying it is, but of course, he forgets.
Your husband may not stay happy and relaxed forever. Now my husband thinks a neighbor (a total jerk) wants to kill him. I try to get him off that, but have closed the blinds on occasion so "HE" can't see us and take aim. Yesterday my husband was belligerent to the jerk, so I asked him to come in the house and work on a puzzle. That keeps him occupied and out of the fridge for a while!
I'm past being sad. This is just the life I'm living now. As one member of our caregivers' support group said, "This is what I signed on for."
Take care of yourself, as much as you can!

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Replies to "Hi @judimahoney, I'm not much of a pretender. I try to be as gracious as I..."

@tsc In our home, I am the one lossing my cognitive abilities. I can start a sentence and forget the point I was trying to make before I can get the whole sentence out. I, too, am impatient and sometimes interrupt people for fear that I''ll remember I had something to say that was iimportant (like "I think the house is on fire."and I'm afraid I will forget it. I realize what a pain in the patooty that can be for others who have to put up with me. One thing I do is to write something down before I forget it. I don't know if your husband is able to do that, but it might make him less anxious if he could write it down because, on some level he knows his memory is not that good and he may worry about your memory, too, but if he writes it down on a "to do " list, it may make him less anxious .. and you could periodically go over the list and ask him which things are time-critical, or which may have been ovecome by events so you can scratch them off the list. I realize that there are many folks on the planet who aren't nearly so fond of to-to lists as I am, ,but I find them to be helpful. Sometimes we may be in the same room, each of us pecking merrily away at our keyboards, and I may think of something but rather than interrupt him, I'll send him an e-mail asking him to do X. He doesn't get interrupt, I don't have to worry about forgeting it (because I can alway check my "sent' messages to assure myself that I've passed the task on to him), and we're just as happy as a pair of clams. It's silly, but it works for us. I have to remember to phrase it correctly, though. He had an aunt who was a total control freak. She would order folks about using what may seem like an innocuous phrase but it really wasn't. Perhaps she would say to her son, "Sweety, you'll be wanting to divorce that little slutty wife of yours. " Not only did she order you to do something, but she wanted to control how you felt about doing it. So it has been our custom to order each other about using that format. "Sweetie, you'll be wanting to get plenty of chocolate when you do the grocery shopping." Sometimes when I think of things that I remember about family or friends who have taken leave of the planet. this is the kind of thing that comes to my mind. There was Aunt Verta Lee and Uncle Pete. They went to a big New Year's Eve party in Houston (about 100 miles from their home in Beaumont. They intended to drink huge quantities of alcohol so they booked a hotel room in the hotel where the party would take place. Aunt Verta Lee had some brand new, fancy shoes she had bought for this fancy party, which, even in a drunken stupor, she had carefully put in the closet before falling into bed. . During the night, Uncle Pete had to relieve himself and went to the bathroom. He took the same path from the bed to the bathroom that he did at home. Unfortunately, the ssequence of steps that led him to the toilet at home led him to the closet in the hotel room. Aunt VertaLee was somewhat less than amused to wake up in the morning to find her brand new, fancy shoes filled with pee. I can only imagine what the maid who cleaned the room thought when she opened the closet to see the shoes that Aunt VertaLee had ldft behind. So, I have to wonder what event or characteristic habit folks will remember about me when I make my exit. I hope it is something that makes them laugh.