Caregiver Support Group

My husband has mixed dementia or frontal temporal atrophy and is getting lupron for prostate cancer. It seems his condition is only getting worse as the dementia gets worse. He now as altered tissue perfusion and decreased ejection fracture with swelling to lower extremities. I spoke with urology oncology and they said to let cardiology handle the cardiac problems because the risk of having to deal with cancer of the prostate problems was something we did not want to deal with with his dementia, which is worse.

I was a full time caregiver for both parents for 4 yrs while also being a grandmother to 5, mother to 2 and holding a full time career. It was beyond hard and overwhelming. I survived 4 yrs and then another 3 while caregiver to just my Mom and then after a 1 yr respite assisting with my father inlaws end of life. I am still an active grandmother and parent. All of my charges as a caregiver have passed on. But I will say, I am here to talk, to support anyone who has the compassion to be a caregiver. God bless anyone who assumes this role.

Hi, I am Janet and I want to say what you are going thru sounds familiar to me. My husband, who is 80, has frontal Dementia, heart failure and prostate cancer.
The heart failure is our first priority, then Dementia and the Cancer is last. It seems the Cancer is very slow growing as is the Dementia. The heart failure has led us to the ER and being hospitalized recently, and is constantly ongoing. He takes about 14 medications and has a long list of medical issues.
We cope as best we can, but finances are a problem and will only increase with time. One Day at a Time is our motto.

We have very good insurance. Heart failure is one of the side effects of the lupron. His dementia gets worse with each lupron treatment also. Early in the morning he is lucic for a couple of hours and then we go down hill. We had our son move in with us to help manage him in the evenings. He has fallen a couple of times and yesterday I found him with his torso on the bed and his feet on the floor. I had to manage to get him to the floor without falling, fed him bkft and hydrated him. He had enough strength to jerk his shirt out of my hands but would not try to get up unless I let him pull on me. I refused cause I have had back surg and in his mind I think he wants me to go away and if he can hurt me, I will be gone one way or another. I called ems and they checked him out and helped him back to bed. 10 minutes after they left he was getting up to the bathroom without any problem. I have a fall device on the bed so it alarms when he starts to get up.