Quick (Or not so quick) Update
So in case anyone was wondering what happened to me or why I don’t write right now I’m going to get the tl;dr version out of the way right now.
My grandmother got dementia. It has made her paranoid. And she’s stopped being able to cook for herself or understand her medications. If you want to know the gory details read further.
What this entailed was me moving back to Canada when my grandmother caught influenza in April. (I was in Georgia). We discovered she hadn’t been eating and we agreed I would live with her while I helped get her back on her feet.
This was fine right up until 2 weeks in, my grandmother fell and chipped a bone in her leg. Little did I know this was the beginning of the problem. My grandmother failed to understand why she wasn’t allowed to put weight on her leg or allowed to drive. When she was allowed onto a cane, she failed to use it and turned the chip into a microfracture. I became frantic to keep her safe and she simply would not listen. I was supposed to have use of her car to keep the household running, she would call my mother endlessly telling her she didn’t know where I was and was just using her car for god knows what. In actuality, i was getting her meds and groceries and this was it.
This completely curtailed my ability to work because I could not leave my grandmother alone. She would not heed doctor’s instructions when you did. I found out she had been stockpiling her meds and not taking them and in fact had forgotten what they were for.
After two months of fighting her tooth and nail to keep her safe my mother came to try and help us. We sat down and made a list of the things we had noticed about my grandmother and ended up at four page document of things that weren’t quite right with back up documentation. My grandmother at this point was very angry at me for taking charge, even though the medical community agreed someone had to run her split-level while she couldn’t use stairs.
We presented our concerns to the doctor with the aim of figuring out if she could still drive. She was forgetting what the buttons were for and didn’t seem to understand that there were two lanes on a road at minimum. While we were trying to keep our business running, my grandmother took the car and got into an accident in a town 45 minutes away doing banking she could have done from her phone. She was at fault and tried to hide it and when discovered acted like she had done the girl she hit a favor for paying for the damage.
We have been going through the Canadian Medical system, which while effective, is slow. From my grandmother’s first MMSE in July to her latest one it has been 4 months of slowly increasing paranoia. We were told not to let her drive. To stay until her memory clinic.
During this time we got her involved in two exercise classes, back at her volunteering and her advocacy. We arranged for friends to take her out. Made sure she increased weight from 74 lbs to 79.5 by dint of homecooking three meals a day for her. We got her to all her doctor’s appointments. Paid bills she missed. The whole thing.
She’s been diagnosed with alzheimer’s with many incidents of playing in toilets at 4 am, misplacing passports, calling banks because she thinks they’ve cancelled her credit cards. She’s also had her license revoked. All while she’s become progressively sure my mother and I are doing something to her. She’s started stealing our stuff, raiding our luggage, telling the neighbors we’re here to take her house and car.
The doctors however have judged her capable of making her own housing decisions, although not to understand her meals or meds.
She has told social services that we were out to get her so many times that we have finally had to leave. She told us that was fine GET OUT. So we did. And returned to the states
Now she tells the neighbors that we abandoned her, while calling my mother every single day to yell at her for not letting her drive. For killing her computer (Which she did because she cancelled her anti-virus on her 15 year old box). For stealing her credit cards and keys, which are definitely still in her purse. The neighbors think we should talk, but grandma only yells at us.
We have stayed in contact with social services, but the outcome is not good looking. It’s not their fault, but because she keeps lying to them, they keep having to let her manage on her own. The people around her keep telling my mom to just let it go, but never have any solutions for how to make sure my grandmother eats and keeps from falling down stairs.
Now for the kicker: My grandmother is an abuser. She has continuously isolated my mom through her young life so that she could blame her for everything that ever went wrong.
This sounds terrible to say of a 90 year old woman. But she’s been trying to use my mom for the scapegoat of her problems since she came out of the womb. My grandmother is also a consummate liar. She’s lied to herself to make it so she’s never wrong. Sadly, she convinces people of these lies because she convinces herself. And my mother deserves a fucking award for sticking by her and trying to make sure that she always had what she needed. It is tragic that at the end of my grandmother’s life the last thing my grandmother will have told my mother was that she wasn’t good enough or wanted.
And this is what the social workers want me to accept. That my mother should just accept the blame of my grandmother’s bad behavior.
I’m sorry. This isn’t helping.
My grandmother isn’t getting the help she needs.
And now my grandmother has brought the lawyers in and we can’t stop her because the Social Workers have judged the only people working in her interest as having to let this woman try and kill herself.
And this is awful. I sincerely hope that for anyone else going through something like this that you know, there are other’s of us out there. And the paranoia and delusions aren’t your fault. But no one’s going to blame you for being angry or sad. Just know… I believe you. And it sucks.
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