Hello everyone, I haven’t posted before as I have just joined.
I haven’t had a loss of a parent yet but my dear 82 year old mum has advancing Alzheimer’s, she was diagnosed 7 years ago. I do all I can to help both mum and my 84 year old dad who she lives with. I visit them almost every day as I live just around the corner.
Mum has been getting much worse with her dementia as is with this awful disease. I feel as though I have been on tenterhooks all this time waiting for the turning point to come when it gets really bad. Mum is already bent over with osteoporosis so already had mobility issues but did ok.
Last year she was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer and for a while we were expecting the worst and we really thought she was dying but the meds seemed to have kicked in and a year on the consultant is happy that the medication is keeping everything at bay.
However, 3 weeks ago she took a nasty fall in the garden and fractured her neck. In A&E they told us to expect the worst and that type of neck fracture is very serious and most elderly patients will die within a month of the injury, so again we were preparing ourselves for the absolute worst outcome but 2 weeks on from that they now say all is healing well and we can remove the neck brace in a week or two.
But she has been in hospital all this time, lying in bed getting more and more confused to the point that she can no longer talk. I got her home yesterday after the hospital moved her to a ward with a known covid outbreak. She is just lying in her bedroom in a hospital bed sleeping all the time. It is heartbreaking and we have no idea if she will pull through this or if this hospital stay has very much exacerbated her dementia. Again, I feel we are posed to prepare ourselves for the worst outcome.
I feel the last 5 years have been a long hard slog of anticipatory grief, trying my utmost to remain positive when I really don’t feel that way and absolute sorrow for the person, my dear mum who I really lost quite some years ago.
Has anyone dealt with this? How did you cope?
x