Impatience with impatient mom with dementia. Any ideas on how to deal?

You are not an awful daughter! It's frustrating dealing with the same behaviors over and over. I ask my mother not to stand with the refriderator door open, eating things right from their containers. I ask her not to throw food on the floor to the dogs, because it causes them to fight. On and on. I act patiently towards her, but inside I want to scream. You are not alone! My mom wasn't a great mom either, but when it's all said and done, I can hold my head up because I know I am doing my best and I did the right thing, regardless of how she was. I'm going to be the bigger person here. It's hard, but I want no regrets when I reach that point when I've done all I can and she needs to move to nursing. Hang in there Barb. We are stronger than we know!

Ditto to all that has been said here. You are not an awful person. If you are, then so am I/we. It is very hard to deal with and every moment of every day I have to take a breath and 'start over'. I start out patient and nice and then I get snappy and impatient. I agree with the comment above to get out as much as you can and find yourself some peaceful moments. Tell yourself you are doing the best you can for your mother. You live and learn and grow everyday with it.

Oh my goodness, you are singing my song. I try so hard to be patient, but after so many, many years of dealing with my dad's aggravating behaviors, my temper has a hair trigger. He has pushed me to my limit so many times, I can't get myself back to where I was before. (I mean mentally and emotionally). I can't make myself be as patient as I used to be.

It's not as if I don't understand the what's going on in my head. I remember well a psychology course that I took in nursing school. The book said that when you do something new (learn to ride a bike, juggle a ball, recite a tongue twister) you are forging new neural pathways in your brain. Like blazing a road through a juggle, it's very hard to do, and very slow going the first time through. Maybe even impossible. But the second time, is quicker, but not by much. By the time you've traveled that trail several thousand times it's paved in concrete and you can drive a NASCAR speedster through at light speed. Every time you are pushed to your limit, till you are nearly in a rage of anger, it happens quicker.

Unfortunately you can't unblaze a trail in a jungle or in your brain, unless you never travel it for a long, long time. Well the chance of a dementia patient's caregiver getting a long long time away from the their aggravation isn't going to happen untill..... well we all know the only thing that's going to end this aggravation. And wishing the misery will end, and what that means, only makes me feel like an even worse person.

I have to add a positive note: After 12yrs. Of my Mom living with me I have learned a lot.. As the dementia has worsend I know when to keep my mouth shut.. As Gayle said it's a learning process and sometimes I stumble, but I learn from my mistakes and keep on keeping on!

Back in my room feeling the same way too. My mom has not been diagnosed with dementia but I am sure it's going on. 24/7 I work from home so I am here all the time I have made my bedroom/office my escape room. Its my time out
room. lol. We can only do so much, I had to smile about the dog deal, my mom feeds my dog everything she eats.......DRIVES ME CRAZY, I cant get mad at the dog, but he will vomit and it is so frustrating. I am a professional butt wiper vomit picker upper. Find you a safe place and you will be fine. I have been called a bitch at 5:00 am. lol, I just tell her the apple did not fall far from the tree. Peace be with you

Trying to not feel guilty is hard when they do everything to make you feel responsible for how they feel. Just got back from a 2 week vacation and I knew I would 'pay for it". Picked up mom last night and it was terrible. No matter how hard I try to stay away from any subject that might make her start in on me, she always finds a way. My cousins wife had died and I asked her how the family was handling it. Instead of answering about that cousin....she started in "how the family is treating her sister Bonnie so terrible...they had picked her up the day before the funeral and left her setting in the car for an hour and a half while they shopped. Then her daughter in law had grabbed her by the face and said they were sick of doing everything for her....then her daughter had had slammed her against the wall saying the same things. (which I know is not true) Its terrible when you are good to your kids and when you get old they treat you so terrible. I told her she was lucky at least they didn't have her going to a shrink (my moms family doc tried putting her on some depression meds and sent her to a pain management" (it helped until she told him she didn't want to take them anymore and he said he can't make her). Then she started in that she had been thinking that I have to be going home and saying terrible things about her or my husband wouldn't dislike her so much. I'm like, no mom, its because of the way you are behaving right now....not anything I have to say. I don't know how much more I can take...I'm at my wits end too. I could never live with her the way some of you do....I have to give you credit. I have never been a caretaker type and honestly did not plan on having any children. I had a son who is autistic and has always had to have 24 hour care. He lived with me for 19 years and now is in a group home. I see him on a weekly basis but I am exhausted between trying to juggle everything, work full time, and being around so much negativity all the time. Then I have the issue with my husband because he is angry with her.....because she makes me miserable and he is protective. Okay, thanks for listening to my whoas too.

I too am feeling this. I had been in therapy for many years dealing with my relationship with a narcissistic mother who now has dementia, and just fell and broke her hip. In the past two years, my siblings and I sold and cleaned out the house she lived in for 40 years, and set her up in a beautiful apartment within an assisted living community. She is currently in the hospital from the hip surgery and will be transferred to rehab. We have no idea if she will be returning to her apartment...which would mean cleaning that out, dealing with her furniture and possessions...I am rambling. The point is, I have times where I am just so angry because all my life she has told us that "I never want to do to you what my parents did to me. I had to do everything for them." And here we are. I find it so hard to be compassionate! When I am actually with her, I feel like I am seven years old trying to make Mamma happy. Ugh. Back to therapy?

There's no getting away from the guilt, as you feel you can never do enough but your patience runs bone dry. My mom had five kids with four different fathers (two of the kids were twins). No one knows who my father was and there was never a father type in the house. My oldest sister (useless, there's one in every family) got married when I was 12 and I was left more or less caring for my twin brother & sister who were 9 at the time and baby sister who was 6. Mom was a cocktail waitress and would tell me before she left "I left a chicken on the counter, put in the oven, blah, blah, blah". I WAS 12, all I wanted to do is hang with my 7th grade girlfriends and obsess about boys. Anyway, mom was an alcoholic and I've worried about her and have tried to please her for 53 years. I am now 60 but I remember the day she walked into the house after not coming home for the weekend, I had given her up for dead and was amazed when she walked in the door - I was 7 years old. I ramble, after many excruciating years we got an intervention for mother which really didn't do any good. She went from a narcissist alcoholic to a narcissist dementia person, There was never any pleasing her and her dementia was awful complete with delusions, horrible hallucinogens, multiple trips to ER. We kept her at home with rotating schedules watching her for 6 years and at the beginning of this year had to put her in a group home. Mom died last Saturday and even though there was nothing else on god's green earth we could have done, I feel guilty. What else could I have done I keep asking myself. Please hang in there. I found that agreeing and validating everything she said helped (I found this after years of saying stuff like "No mom, grama is not in the hospital she died 21 years ago, if you're 86 years old grama would be 114, people don't live to be a 114". That goes nowhere. There's no cure for this insidious disease. I always thought alcoholism was the ultimate curse, but it looks like a walk in the park compared to dementia. This experience has opened my eyes to have so much compassion for people just starting this journey and my heart goes out to you. The thing is you don't know what to say because it's progressive and there is no cure. That's such a defeating sentence. You feel so helpless and so matter what she is your mother and you want to help and don't want to see her suffer, God love you.

My mother is on 120 mg morphine a day.This is a lot but she has had her dose steadily increased over a year's time.At this point it's hard for me to tell if her behavior is from the morphine or is it just still her personality and I am just not taking it as well as I was or is it the morphine or her personality and the morphine.Everyday I keep looking for the signs of any mental decline.I also have to consider the possibility of depression mixed in with all the other things that are her behaviors.I also am not Mary Poppins everyday but I get the things done she needs done.Her personality is a mix of narcissism and passive-aggressive we never really had a close relationship.The only thing I have control over is the way I allow this to effect me.Everyday is not always successful and I allow myself to fail but I always know I tried under difficult circumstances.I have only completed 1 yr. now of my mother living with me and I am not the person I was 12 months ago.I still don't know what I am right now,it seems to change from day to day.But I try, and keep moving and I think I have taken more steps forward than backward.The best thing I have learned from everybody on this site is that it is okay to take care of yourself and in fact I would not be doing the right thing if I don't.Although my mother's mind is at this point mostly intact I know as time goes on this won't always be the case and I am already trying to prepare myself for losing her twice.Altz's and other conditions that effect their minds make you go through the grieving process twice,you lose the person they were and then still have to go through losing the actual person.No, I am not the person I was 12 months ago and I grieve for that loss and the way my life was 12 months ago and I am going to let myself grieve.However,good things have happened despite the changes ,it's just I only find them when I look for them.I really do just take one day at a time,just don't have the energy to look to far into the future.But I am determined that there will be a future.

Same boat here. For the last 7 years (since my dad died), my mom has been going downhill. I've been trying to change her way of thinking about things, to be more positive, etc. I've finally realized she is beyond being able to change -- it will only get worse. I have started praying every day that God will change me -- change me to be more patient and kind and loving with her. It hasn't happened overnight, but I am slowly starting to change. Things don't bother me quite as much. I have more compassion than I did, and she doesn't get on my nerves quite as much as before. I will continue this prayer everyday and depend on God to get me through this.