Lots of people advocate ‘Going With the Flow’ when dementia is resident in your home.  I’m not particularly fond of his phrase as it is jargon that stems from political correctness.  I much prefer: ‘Fail to Plan: Plan to Fail’ and often resort to GIGO as a tool as analysis when things go wrong.  In short if my input is Garbage the response from Maureen will reflect the quality of my intervention and I will get Garbage in return.

We didn’t make it to give Clarice any support yesterday and have no idea of developments during the night.  Maureen has woken this morning wanting to ‘get away from here’.  Not an unusual theme for her on waking up: perhaps intensified by her ‘flight’ mentality.  Maureen has tended to ‘flight’ rather than ‘fight’ throughout her life.  She has often ran away or hidden bad news from the press (family members).  There is no need for the sake of this blog to give such personal detail but running away has left haunting memories that continue to surface with dementia.  There is lots of stuff that she has never dealt with and never will.

Maureen is unsure of the best way to support a woman who is close enough emotionally, and in age, to be a sister.  She is a little confused about her uncle’s condition.  On occasions she forgets that his Alzheimer’s has progressed to the stage where Clarice could no longer meet his care needs.  My understanding of his current condition is that he will need to remain in hospital or return to his Care Home to be kept comfortable.  His life is drawing to a close.

None of this is going to be easy for Maureen.  She is still grieving for the untimely passing of her daughter.  Her dementia means that she is not really sure of what is happening to Dennis and how she can help.  Her predisposition is to run away and that is driving her approach to dementia.  There is nowhere for Maureen to run any more and that is really hard for her to deal with.