I would love to know more about how life can be made better for dementia sufferers, if you were willing to share.
My two experiences with it (pretty much wholly second-hand) have been with D's aunt and my dad's father, and they were both pretty terrible. I think D's aunt was just in a bad situation, as her husband had just died (we expect the grief from that accelerated the dementia) and they had no kids, and her brothers and sisters lived far enough away that it was hard for them to manage care for her, so she wasn't able to retain care in familiar surroundings or with people she was familiar with, which was miserable for her. My dad's father, on the other hand, was in a family-inflicted situation where everyone just behaved poorly, and my parents believe that he could have been happier and lived longer had his family handled things differently. (My dad, for various reasons, didn't have much say in how things went.)
Though now that you mention it, I also have a friend whose mother is going through dementia, and as far as I can tell her situation is (as far as these things can ever be) rather ideal -- she lives at home with her husband, and her daughter (my friend) lives nearby and helps with meals, etc. when they need it. She is also awfully sweet -- I have met her a couple of times and aside from a certain vagueness (and the fact that she never remembers me from time to time) she could almost pass as everything being perfectly fine.
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Date: 2015-02-16 04:15 pm (UTC)My two experiences with it (pretty much wholly second-hand) have been with D's aunt and my dad's father, and they were both pretty terrible. I think D's aunt was just in a bad situation, as her husband had just died (we expect the grief from that accelerated the dementia) and they had no kids, and her brothers and sisters lived far enough away that it was hard for them to manage care for her, so she wasn't able to retain care in familiar surroundings or with people she was familiar with, which was miserable for her. My dad's father, on the other hand, was in a family-inflicted situation where everyone just behaved poorly, and my parents believe that he could have been happier and lived longer had his family handled things differently. (My dad, for various reasons, didn't have much say in how things went.)
Though now that you mention it, I also have a friend whose mother is going through dementia, and as far as I can tell her situation is (as far as these things can ever be) rather ideal -- she lives at home with her husband, and her daughter (my friend) lives nearby and helps with meals, etc. when they need it. She is also awfully sweet -- I have met her a couple of times and aside from a certain vagueness (and the fact that she never remembers me from time to time) she could almost pass as everything being perfectly fine.