I love my mother desperately. I want to help but I feel like a horrible person because I’m starting to get resentful. I get angry, don’t want to talk to her and if I hear her repeat or tell the same story again or ask me to fix her another cup of coffee or tell her she has to eat or any of the other stuff like I’m dealing with a five year old ,it drives me insane and it’s only been three months. I feel really bad. My husband is very supportive and a wonderful person and she smokes all the time (outside on the back porch at least she does it there thank God) claims she always wants him to do but when ounce to do something refuses I say things like, been there done that don’t want to do anything don’t have to do anything. All she wants is for me to sit there and listen to her and talk to her and she’s partially deaf so I have to yell. She doesn’t understand she’s 79 years old, doesn’t know how to use a cell phone, won’t learn, won’t try anything, is critical of everyone and everything. It gets so bad sometimes I literally go and hide in my basement and I feel horrible. And she comes looking for me she won’t come to the basement, she won’t go up her downstairs thank God but she will stand there and scream and yell for me and make me feel bad. I don’t even know what to do.
A lot of what you’re describing is the dementia. It’s not that she won’t try to learn to use a cell phone, it’s that the disease has scrambled her brain’s connections so that she can’t learn anything new. Keys to success will be routine, familiar things, and agreeing with her. What this weird disease does is still let the person still be social and interactive, and so it’s hard at first to understand that they really have lost a lot of their abilities, not just memory, but being able to use logic and reasoning, and judgement. You can download a checklist from here:
https://tamcummings.com/stages-of-dementia/
This is a helpful read:
http://www.dementiacarestrategies.com/12_pt_Understanding_the_Dementia_Experience.pdf
and go on youtube and check out the Teepa Snow videos.
this is good too
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cZTgG6kDjs
It sounds like you need a break-either in-house assistance, daycare, or perhaps moving mom to memory care.
You’re trying to do right by your mom. That’s a loving thing. But she may need more care than you can provide by yourself.
I understand and live with feeling like a horrible person for many of your same reasons.
Conversation is very difficult. At dinner, I quiz my husband a lot about what happened at work today so that there will be SOMETHING to talk about. I have heard all her stories. A million times. It's mind numbing. And now she does some confabulation so the words are just that, words with little to no reality behind them. Sometimes she's right on track others, not so much. Car rides? Yikes. I sing the whole time to the radio. Unless I need to tell her something. It's a 30 minute drive to almost anywhere so that is a long drive!
Like you, I am very lucky to have a wonderful and supportive husband. If he was frustrated with this, I would have to make other arrangements but lucky for her, he's one of the good guys.
You say she won't learn and won't try. Please consider that she is probably not able to. New things are probably confusing to her and she just might not be able to try. Frustrating but it could be a reality that you need to try to accept. Don't expect her to grasp new things. People with dementia really can't learn new things.
I totally understand hiding in the basement. Maybe you can hire some help to sit with her for a few hours so you don't have to hide in your house. Instead, get out of the house and do something for yourself and get a break from her.
Adjusting your mind set can help a bit too. I expect conversation to be boring and maybe not make any sense. I expect silly questions, though they do still take me by surprise sometimes and I don't recover quickly enough to not respond in a fashion that shows I'm confused by the question.
Good luck.
If Mom has any money, you may want to place her into an AL. I placed Mom into one. When her house didn't sell the money ran out I had to place her in LTC with Medicaid paying.
We all are not Caregivers. You have to be a very patient person and I am not. And I get overwhelmed if too much is coming at me at once.