If she was younger then this would all be a great plan. It’s not unworkable. But mum is at the end nearly and grasping at her fantasies. She has had them her whole life- she has never had money and when she did she hoarded her property and destroyed it.
I have POA and am mum’s primary person. She has capacity so still has legal rights over herself. I am not going to go down the capacity route as it’s expensive and stressful. And she still has all her marbles - mostly. No dementia.
Mum lives in a rest home and has about $50 a week allowance. That’s it. I manage the bills for her out of this and there’s a small amount that was in the bank. Under a $1000. Most of her needs are personal now- but I pay for some things out of our grocery money. I am still working and it’s not a hardship for me.
But she’s obsessed with leaving the rest home- she calls it a prison. They are mostly nice and she is safe and looked after. Of course it’s not the same as having your own freedoms etc. And there are some issues as with any care place. But Mum is at that time of her life and she can’t manage on her own and needs to stay at the rest home.
Mum’s plan is to build a 'property' with 'investments' from her few dollars a week, and leave the home at Christmas. She is driven and obsessed.
My thoughts are that I may let her join an investment scheme to put her $24 a week into and just let her be. She can go nowhere with this.
As she is out of time. And when she dies it will all be eaten up by somewhere else - what’s a thousand or two. Mum has no will and no desire to get one. She has nothing to leave anyone and is under the threshold of probate, which is our law here in New Zealand for death legalities.
She consistently asks about this and has said that she wants me to do her wishes and not ignore her. I have ignored her a few times as I believed it some things were not in her best interests and so I conveniently 'forgot' them. Like spending all her money on lotto tickets. Like demanding to go back to her hoarder’s home for a visit. She did get back to the house through my brother and got very sick afterward. The house is full of mouse poo and urine and black mold and damp and hoarded filth. So she got a serious respiratory illness and is only just recovering now.
I am finding it really hard. I am doing my best. I have not even talked about a lot of what Mum is up to. Like the endless messages.
I still work fulltime and have my own struggles. It’s hard.
I love Mum and want to do what’s best for her and me.
I believe I am doing ok. This seems to be the way it is for now.
What do you think?
I know that she may sound lucid, but nothing she has been talking about makes any sense. Fixation is also a symptom of dementia.
Even the hoarding could have been due to dementia. If it was from depression, I am sorry to say (as a person who has had to deal with chronic depression since childhood) that depression and stress can lead to dementia in later years, due to heightened levels of cortisol.
You need to get your mum assessed, and I would tell the GP (or NZ equivalent) about your mum's fixations, as a heads up. She needs to be prevented from leaving the safety of the home.
Nevertheless, I would humour her in her delusions, but always say that more needs to be saved before she can look for another forever home. Give her something to hope for; just keep her comfortable and content.
A few days later, I found he had moved a lot of money out of his IRA that wasn’t required. His explanation was he just wanted the total in his checking account to be a certain round number. This triggered huge taxes even though he put the money back. It took about six months to get him diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia, but once I had that, with my DPOA, I took away his ability to access his accounts for his own good.
I gave him a debit card with a low limit ($100) and monitored it daily. He would buy a $4.00 ice cream cone and then leave a $20 tip using the card. He couldn’t deal with cash at all by then.
He continued to obsess about money and investments and taxes and would sometimes ask me about it over and over. I would sometimes give him a printout of one page of a statement or a tax return when he became really obsessed and wouldn’t let it go. This would often satisfy him for a time. He also used to love to collect dropped coins. So a few times I gave him all my collected spare change to separate into quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies.
All this to say I agree that you should find something harmless that addresses the obsession itch if you can’t redirect it.
Once the FTD took hold, my dad had lots of other obsessions as well, some of which were dangerous, others just insanely annoying. Meds helped tamp them down to manageable levels. It took some time and experimenting to find the meds and dosages that worked.
I am off to research more about FTD now. In my LO, it is hard to tell if the obsessions are the long held OCD ones or something more is creeping in.
https://www.agingcare.com/articles/validation-method-for-dementia-calming-or-condescending-166707.htm
She had nothing but her SS. She did Ok, since she lived with YB for free. But her delusions that she was going to win the grand prize was always kind of a joke in the family.
I know of exactly ONE person who won at that. She won $10.
We just let mom enter the sweepstakes over and over. The only hard part of this was that she insisted on keeping all the stuff that came in the envelope--so 40+ years of those envelopes with all the inserts were saved, carefully, in plastic bins in the basement.
I like JoAnn's suggestions of the scratch-off tickets! Maybe that will give her a sense of 'hope'. My g-daughter recently won $5 on a scratch off. She only spent $40 to get that $5.
Maybe some of her plans will be realistic? Some that could be turned into actual goals. Others may be just outrageous nonsense.
Sorting each requests into Want, Wish & Whim may help.
Mum wants to escape. OK. So she plots & plans.
I think my tolerance to listen to an unrealistic plan is about 3 mins. "Yeah, sounds good Mum".
Then redirect & change topic.
Avoid aguments. Avoid lengthy rants. Avoid trying to reason. Just occassionaly tune in to her hopes.
Blandly agree that it would be nice for her to move one day..
PS I quite like the $25 or so a week investment idea. Have the app on your phone. Can show her updates every visit (until this obsession fades)
Dementia is not simply memory problems. It's bad decision-making, obsession, hoarding, crazy thinking, and lack of understanding her own illness.
There may be medicines to help her, so let her doctors know what's going on and ask about them.
Good luck in a bad situation. Mum is lucky to have you to look out for her.
She already has some mental issues since she is/was a hoarder, and now is showing signs of dementia.
So since you are her POA(and even if you weren't), I would just tell her little "fiblets" that yes you are "investing" her money and then just use it for whatever her daily needs might be, instead of taking it out of your own money that you yourself will need someday for your own care.
Someone with dementia and mental issues cannot be reasoned with, so it's best to just humor her best you can, and then change the subject to something else.
You are doing the best you can and that is all any of us can do. Just don't continue to be in denial about your mums mental status/decline as that doesn't help anyone.
I missed the bit where she says she has POA. That should make things easier for her to manage the situation.