Hello, everyone! I hope your Thursday is going well. I have some questions about dementia/natural aging/concerns that our doctor keeps dismissing. I'm also going to apologize in advance because I'm still learning terms and what is correct to say as far as diagnoses, so please be patient with me.
My mother is 72. She had a rough time with COVID in 2020 which resulted in her being hospitalized for a week, has been through 5 surgeries in 20 years (4 in the last 10 years), and buried one child.
I've been the one here at home, with my husband and young daughter, helping her through surgeries, COVID, etc. I'm essentially stuck here for the duration. (Most of the time I do look at it as repaying her for all she's done for me and as a blessing to be able to do this for her).
In the last 5 years, she has become...... odd? She freaks out if I leave the house without her, but acts like she doesn't want to go anywhere, but it's never the same way twice. For example: I went grocery shopping this week without her, and she got pouty about it. I mean acting like a toddler pouting. But when I took my daughter to piano lessons, she couldn't push me out the door fast enough. Last week, she loved that I did the shopping without her, but threw a fit about is going to piano lesson.
She says I'm doing too much around the house, but doesn't want to help clean or cook. I took over doing the meals about 4 years ago because of health issues with my father, and she just wasn't wanting to cook what he needed. She continuously says she wants to cook and that she's perfectly capable of cooking, but she set a cutting board on fire yesterday and didn't realize it at all. This was a wooden cutting board that she set on the stove with a low flame going... it was terrifying.
She sleeps a ton now, but claims she's hardly getting any rest even with her CPAP machine working. She gets angry whenever we don't go along with what she says, works everyone into a panic over minor issues (like a flat tire on the car... my husband is a mechanic, so it's a minor issue/fix for us), but then when it's major issues like a health scare she gets angry and tells us we aren't trusting God enough.
Again, all of this has changed in the last 5 years. Doctors dismiss us when I say something isn't right... especially when I say our family has a history of sundowners and dementia.
Has anyone dealt with this? Can anyone give me advice that doesn't leave me being a doormat and compromising my daughter's upbringing? I'm truly lost on this one, and I thought maybe this community could help me with this one.