Spouse denial of MCI destroying our marriage

Dear @mdcatlin
It takes me way more to tune up & down for your member name. My brain injured doesn’t work back then. Anyway…

>>>—————— DAMAGE WITHIN YOUR WIFE? —————< >>————- MY FAMILY HAD MDI ————————-< >>—————- ME IS A HAS OR HAD MCI TO TBI ————<

I understand how you feel I really do.
But I consider if it was me would my husband take care of me and the answer is yes. It’s each to their own you have to do what is right for you? Sometimes you have to take care of yourself no one else will. Of course it crosses most peoples minds and no one will fault you for walking away.

Several years ago I did some volunteer hospice training at a nursing home and saw how dramatically dementia residents' cognitive status and awareness would change from week to week.

My Mother has been diagnosed with MCI, and my Dad is taking care of her.

Bless you. I know this is hard. My husband has MCI and I often feel like running. So we hired a companion 2 days a week who also stays with him when I “run away” just for the day sometimes.
Taking care of myself leaves me more patient and compassionate. This is hard for him too as I’m sure it is for your wife.
If you can see it as the disease that causes the behavior and not her personally, compassion may take the place of some anger and frustration.
It is normal and okay to feel frustrated, angry and resentful. She may come around if you are able to be gentle on yourself and her.
You both need a hug. I hope you find some support during this stressful journey.

One of the things that I have learned is that trying to "correct" a person with dementia is useless and is more likely to bring up anger than "oh yeah, you're right." Is it hard to just not argue with someone who is so obviously wrong? Yes. Is it worth it? Also yes. Try to think of go-arounds. When my mother-in-law would try to go help her mother (my M-I-L was 98 at the time) I would say I would go with her instead of trying to get her to acknowledge that her mother had been dead for 50 years. We would take a little walk until she was just befuddled because California didn't look anything like Pennsylvania. She would stop and I would just say, "do you want to try later?" and she would agree so we would go back home. When my husband gets angry at the smallest things, I just listen until he runs out of steam. They are not acting out just to annoy us, so I let go of my self focus and stay calm and loving. Maybe this will help. It isn't easy to do so don't expect miracles. But every little bit of patience helps.

I’m moving back to the US after living in Mexico for 20 years. There are no services here for disabled people, ramps are rare, & even some doctors practice in bldgs with no elevators! This is no place to be for anyone as sick as I now am. On one hand, It’s been far easier to get MRIs, CTs, labs, even IVIG here but you have to go to MX City because health care in the rest of the country is definitely not, um, not good. I’d say more but I don’t want to offend anyone. It’s time to go home. I want to spend time together with my children & grandson before I get called home to the Heavenly Cosmos, where I have 2 children waiting for me. It’s an amicable agreement. It’s time for us to say goodbye. We had a lot of good years together, we got to live in Canada for a year, & all over Mexico. He’s got long COVID, he’s tired, he’s got no one to help him, no one to vent to, & his entire family expects him to be the fixer for everything. He had to take care of his brother for 5 months. It was back breaking work, bathing him, changing his diapers, etc & also to watch his brother go down so painfully with sepsis from bed ulcers that could easily have been treated adequately in the US but not in MX…..it was after amputation of his leg because of gangrene—the public health system in the hinterlands is that bad, they put off the amputation so long to the point that the gangrene was all the way up his leg. It was awful. And his mother is dying & it’s a very slow death. All the family has to take turns sitting with her 24/7. It’s really rough for him, being a caregiver for his mom & me. No one helps him or gives him a break being my caregiver, so he’s all alone with no relief, especially because I have so so many serious & rare autoimmune illnesses, with tremendous pain, & autoimmune atrophy of my smooth & skeletal muscles, I’m in a wheelchair. And if I can, I’ll come back to visit. I’m excited to live in the US again, a little worried about all the mass shootings, but oh well. It’s dangerous here, & it’s dangerous NOB (north of the border). I’m worried about the expense of all my medications. I’ll enroll in Medicare but I know how lousy it is. At least my meds are affordable here, but not in the US. But I’m excited to be going home, back to my own country. I’m sure the reverse culture shock will not be easy but I’m so happy that I’m going home.

I am so sorry, I replied in the wrong spot, about my work in nursing homes, and my mother's diagnosis of MCI. What I did not say, because it is very new and very few people know, is that my husband has also been diagnosed with the same. It is very early and many days he is the person I have always known. And then he will have a spell where I can see the impairment, and back again. Sometimes he is grateful for my help. Other days he is insulted. It's hard to know what day we're on.

I saw this post on a difficult day, searching for validation that some of this fluctuation starts early. It's hard to know what is disease process, what is emotional reaction to the disease process, what is tangled in relationship dynamics from before all of this business. Insight fluctuates. Fear/anger fluctuates with it. Then he apologizes for bringing this into my life and we both crack open, and just cry. The tide comes in, the tide goes out.