Living with somebody who has dementia is so very hard but to live with a parent who has dementia is got to be one of the hardest things to do. 

I never thought that I would have ended up moving in with my mom when I did, but I had lost my job a week after I started the Pima Medical Institute and then my roommate decided she needed to live by herself with her young son so I ended up moving in with my friends ex-wife who had two small children but after a month I could not stay there as I did not agree with her parenting. I called my mom and asked to come stay with her until I could get back on my feet and of course she said yes. I had a two hour commute to school and stayed with my son two nights a week so I wouldn't have to travel so much. 

My plan was to graduate from school, get a job close to where I had been living as I did not want to stay in my hometown, However, I ran into an old flame and we started dating again. I moved in with him, decided to do my externship at a clinic in town and after five weeks I got hired there. I thought that my life was going to be good. It was good for awhile. I was very happy with my boyfriend, not so much with my job as I kept wanting to go be a phlebotomist. Anyways, I thought that we would save some money and we could move down where I was living before as there were better opportunities but that was not to happen.

I decided to go see my mom at lunch one day and when I opened the door I got an instant headache from the gas fumes. I took her outside, went in turned to stove off and opened the windows. She had not turned the knob completely off and it was slowly leaking out. Who knows how long it had been on as It is a small trailer. If I had not gone there she would not be here today. I would go over and smell that something had been burnt as the smell lingered. I told my boyfriend that I had to move back in with her and he agreed and moved in with me. It was hard for my husband to make such a big change as he had been used to living by himself for so long then with me for such a short time before moving in with my mom.

After a couple of years I quit being a Medical Assistant to getting a job as a phlebotomist with the local hospital and work the evening shift so that my mom would only be alone for a short time as she was getting worse which is expected. She would put her coffee in the microwave and walk away or put something in the microwave and put it on for too long and burn the food. I would make sure that I fed her before I left so that she would not do that however she would forget that she just ate and do it anyways. 

My mom would be watching Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy and tell us a story about how she almost went to that show in Hawaii but they wouldn't give her three days off to go. Those shows are not filmed in Hawaii. When people with dementia watches movies or shows it seems that they put themselves into that movie or show. How the mind works really boogles my mind. It is hard not to correct them when they get things wrong which they say you shouldn't do. Oh my how hard it is not to do.

The next door neighbor became a "drug house" with all kinds of people coming and going at all hours of the night. I got surveillance cameras and a nanny cam. One day I watched my mom on the nanny cam go out the door and then come rushing back in looking out the kitchen window and then go to the living room window then back to the kitchen window and looked kind of scared. I worked about 2 minutes from home so when I seen this I told the front desk that I was going home to check on my mom. I asked her what happened to make her scared and she didn't know what I was talking about. There were a couple of people come to the door and my mom would open the door without knowing who these people were. Iat really started to get bad next door. I complained to the manager who told me to call the police so that he could use that to evict the person. Eventually he was evicted thank goodness. We got scared that she would go for a walk and one of the "druggies" would try to rob her or hurt her. We got scared that she would open the door to the wrong people. She just didn't seem to understand that there are bad people who would try to rob or hurt her.

The big problem is their minds don't work they way it's supposed to anymore and you cannot do anything about it. Another big problem is that if you move them to a different place to live they might wander as they are trying to "go home" that is the home that they knew. I cannot take my mom very far from home as she tells me she wants to go home after being there for about 10 minutes. 

My mom is 90 years old and not in bad health, it is her mind that is not working. I have quit trying to understand what is going on in her mind when she is picking the pretty flowers to where there are none left and thinks that it is pretty. Or when she tears off the plant and puts it in the dirt expecting it to grow. Or when she rearranges things over and over and over again. 

The key to living with a person with dementia is having lots of patience and that is not very easy sometimes. Some days are worse than others and all you can do is your best to make them happy.