Mom got settled back in with her coffee maker. It didn't take long to realize that Mom's "stock up" mentality, combined with her dementia was leading to an awful lot of coffee accumulating in her apartment. At Costco, she'd been thrilled to find a three pound can of decaf, and we'd bought it. But within weeks, she was claiming that she was out of coffee, and was buying more. By the time I got a chance to snoop in her kitchenette, there were at least 6 cans of coffee in there, all open, and all missing a few scoops.
She began mentioning that her coffee didn't taste good. I didn't think too much about it, until she told me that her coffee pot wouldn't turn on AGAIN. I stopped by her apartment while she was at dinner, and once again reset the GFI. I then opened up where the filter and coffee go, and was startled to find mold. A lot of mold. As in a "grossed me out despite having a biology background" quantity of mold.
I cleaned up the coffee maker, then headed to the local mall, where I picked up a small, red, Keurig coffeemaker. I mention the red because my Mom loves the color red. You can get her to do nearly anything if it involves getting her something red. She still struggles a bit with the directions. Right now I have big stickers on it with numbers showing her which order to do things in order to get her coffee. About once every two weeks, I go over and have her make me a cup so I can see where she's getting hung up on the numbers. I've not really told her where to buy the K-cups for her coffee maker, so she can't "stock up". But now she's hoarding coffee mate...
This week was a big week for me. I realized that I've not been very patient with Mom lately, and I finally went to the local Alzheimer's support group. It was awesome. I was able to remind myself that she doesn't do the things she does on purpose, that I'm not alone, and that it isn't a bad thing to get help. In fact, I've finally broken down and called a local "companion care" service, and will hire them to come by 4 hours a week. I'm hoping that the companion can help Mom make her shopping list and take her to the grocery, hopefully avoiding the food hoarding. I wouldn't care if Mom bought duplicates and I could sneak out the extra stuff and take it to the food pantry. But she opens each new container or package, then "puts it away". We wind up with a dozen or more open packages of sugar free cookies! When I try to talk her out of buying more, we wind up arguing in the grocery aisle.
That's the think about Alzheimer's, you can't reason with a loved one with dementia. Their brains just can't connect the dots any more. I'm actually lucky; Mom's dementia hasn't made her angry and paranoid. But it is still really hard to accept things that they do and say. I've linked to a list similar to the one that I received at the meeting.
http://www.alzheimersreadingroom.com/2010/03/ten-tips-for-communicating-with.html
There is no "getting ahead" of the decline. You just do what you can to keep your loved one safe, make them feel like they still have some control/independence, and not lose your own mind in the process.
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