Highly recommend googling “Loving Detachment”, it REALLY helped me to cope during the worsening dementia years of home care-giving and now that he is in AL.
It will be very hard for you, but Loving Detachment teaches you that there are situations where you must step back and seek peace for yourself, as you have absolutely no control and little to no influence. With dementia, you can’t expect reasonable thought from a person whose brain can’t reason, thus “I won’t go to the doctor”, “I won’t take my pills”. You can’t expect short term memory from a person whose brain is becoming broken with every day that passes. Of course, she doesn’t remember x, y, and z. Stop fighting Mr Dementia- he has a tight grip on your mom and he isn’t letting go, ever. Enjoy the moments of lucidity, enjoy laughter with sharing an old funny family story. Just yesterday during a visit, we laughed and laughed when I brought up the old family story of the potato launcher my husband built with the kids from PVC pipe and shot off in the backyard. I can think of a hundred of them and each time I bring one up, we laugh again. The kids childhood and his childhood work best.
It will be very hard, but don’t answer the phone when your mom calls for the 2nd and later times. Don’t stay on the phone when she segues into anger, just say, “Gotta go”. Don’t get to reason with her. Don’t argue with her, just reflect and repeat back to her what she’s saying to you when in person.
My husband advanced to exactly the same as your mom AND it landed him in the hospital, BUT it was the best thing, they kept him for 3-4 days to straighten everything out from refusing meds, refusing his diabetic diet, and staying up all night. We were told they arranging for AL “for now, to receive PT “. I quick prepared the AL room and he was transferred to it by wheelchair van, although he was full ambulatory. He received PT there and got settled into a routine and the days progressed into months, no five years. He has a circle of guy friends, loves the staff, has never asked to come home.