Strange accusations from Mother.
I've gotten so where I dread Mom going out of the house. If I sit with her, she comes up with lots of tasks I need to do. If I don't sit with her, she gets mad about something she imagines I've done. Tonight was a topper... literally. She came in so mad at me she had fire coming out of her eyes. She was mad at what I had done to her bushes. She said I had cut the tops off of them. Huh??? It turns out she was talking about the big crepe myrtles trees we have. She's convinced that I've cut the tops off of all of them, so that they look like silly men with hats on. I told her that no one has touched them in years, but she knows I'm lying.
Where do they come up with this stuff? The trees look like always. Maybe it's her eyes or her brain remembering them different. No telling. She took the easiest explanation -- that her 64-yo 5'6" daughter whacked the tops off these 20" tall trees.
Why don't they ever imagine we do good things that make them happy? Why does it have to be something that makes them mad? Maybe anger is an easier emotion to feel?? I don't know.
Angel
Something that bothers me with these things more than what is being alleged is the follow-up of how bad I am. Sometimes I wonder if she enjoys getting angry and saying bad things. When I get upset, she looks pleased at times. It could be that she really hates me, but needs me, too. She has always been a hermit, so it may be she resents having to have me here.
This is really hard to describe! But then it is also eerily weird when it happens.
Strangely enough, I went out this morning half expecting to see the tops of the trees gone. Crazy me. We can start buying into their reality if we're not careful. Makes me think of folie a deux, where two people are pulled into the same madness or delusion.
I'm feeling depressed today. There's a lunchtime party at the senior center that I thought I'd go to. I have a couple of friends there that are fun to be with. It should help pick my spirits up some.
No don't get out the chainsaw we don't want to hear your next post from your hospital bed with Mom as your room make nursing the arm you broke. The nurses though it would be so nice to keep you together so they moved out your perfectly sane 60 yr old room mate and wheeled Mom in.
I had a demented room mate for a couple of days followed by a 20 something drug addict who had added alcohol to the mix the night before.
My mother was quite convinced that any small bad thing that happened was the result of somebody playing a practical joke on her. So when a high wind blew the gate shut on our driveway, she came storming into the house and flat out accused me of having done it on purpose, knowing that she'd taken her car out for a drive. With 20:20 hindsight I now realise that things like this were clear clinical signs of dementia; but at the time, as with your mother JessieBelle, I just thought it was her natural born pessimism and misanthropy talking.
To cheer you up about being called a bush whacker, what if you really were? My last next door neighbour told me that years before he'd been instructed by his wife to cut down a conifer that was taking up too much space and light in their hedgerow. So he obediently got out his chainsaw, located what he thought was the trunk, near the base, and set to work. Timbeeeeerrrrrr...! In the aftermath, he saw his wife come out of the house on the phone to their daughter, saying "you'll never guess what your father's just done..." Yup. Wrong tree.
I just thought of it. Bushwhacked is really a word. And it is about how I felt yesterday when she came in the door with her anger. There may not be any reason we're going through this except maybe to learn how to get out of it. I wish I could see the why of things. Maybe I will when I look back one day. Or it could be simply that some people are mean.
I know that many, many persons with dementia do have these paranoid thoughts. Just for the record, not all do. My husband did go through a period of accusing me of stealing, etc. but that only lasted a few months early on. For most of the 10 years he trusted me and appreciated me (and argued about what he was capable of, of course.) My mother does not accuse any of us of any acts against her. She is happy that we visit and never makes negative comments about our appearance or behavior.
Your experience is very real. I am not doubting that in the slightest. But (thank heavens!) it is not a universal experience with dementia. I have absolutely no idea why it is happening to you. Once again, hugs.
Stacey, I'm lucky that my mother has only accused me of stealing once. I handled that one well. I don't know how to handle being accused of whacking trees. This is the third or fourth time I've been accused of bush abuse. One bush got some disease and died. I was responsible for its demise. This latest tree whacking -- She must think I sneak out late at night with some loppers and a ladder. It's really kind of funny, but hard to live with. Isn't it strange that they need to think of the person helping them as underhanded and evil in some way?
My Nana came to live with us from Wales, when I was only ten, and she began the slow decline into dementia, and even though I was young, I saw how her actions made my own Mom (her MIL), so very physically ill with stress/anxiety and HBP, just dealing with the day to day insanity of it all. My Nana used to accuse my Mom of stealing her things, silly things, and then we would invariably find them hidden away in her room. She would also kype stupid things from around the house, and wrap them up in tissue, the wrap rubber bands around them, and we would find these too, never knowing if they were important items like expensive jewelry or silly tidbits like gumball machine toys or bottle caps, or even worse, excrement, but we had to unwrap them just to be sure. She would hide all sorts, in drawere, shoe boxes or the suitcases in her closet. These things used to drive my Mom crazy, until one day Nana just snapped, and refused to get out of bed, and just layed there rigid, and fully clothed for 2 straight days, refusing water and food or to even speak.
The ambulance was called to take her to the hospital, where after giving her a big dose of a Vallium type drug, and she relaxed and went into a deep sleep. Later, test results showed that she carried a latent case of Syphilis, which she had carried untreated for many many years, probably since the 40's or 50's. She was then treated with a big dose of antibiotics, but it was thought that this may have contributed to her dementia/Altztiemers or as they then called it, organic brain disease. From that hospitalization, she went to live in a Nursing home, as my Mom just could not take it anymore. It is so difficult to live the day to day, especially when they are nasty to deal with anyways! My heart breaks for you, but I know that you intend to carry on until you no longer can, so take care of you, and know that I am thinking of you! Stacey ☺