[CaptainCrunch]

I wanted to bump this, not for anything but just as we go through this exhausting and heartbreaking journey with both of my parents and the rest of my family, maybe other people sometime down the road will see this and there's something helpful.

We had to split up my parents due to financial neccessity. We moved my Dad to another senior home about 10 minutes away because in effect it would save the family about $3500 a month, which is huge for all of us.

First of all to my mom, Last time I updated, I talked about my mom getting violent with the staff. At this point, they are looking at moving her to another facility that's better with dealing with extensive needs people. But because of the shortage of public beds in this province its probably going to take a year to find a space. So while we wait, my mom is pretty much sedated to keep her calm.

When you combine this with her advanced dementia, she's now entered a stage where she's not really communicative, she tries but she doesn't make sense, she doesn't know who we are, and she pretty much sleeps all day and sometimes wanders at night. She's also had a few falls, thank god she hasn't been hurt badly. Once in a while my sharp tongued sharp as a whip mother will peek out from behind the fog, but that's few and far between, and our visits to her are usually very short, as we feed her some of her favorites and chat with her with little response and then she tires out and goes to sleep.

My Dad is a different story. When we moved him we encouraged him to go see her whenever he wants, take a cab, whatever and on Sunday's we'll all visit. But it created so many issues because frankly, I don't think my Dad will ever understand Dementia, and he can't stand to see her in the current state and he manufactures things.

For example we set up a Christmas dinner and it wasn't great because Mom was very distant and irritable and tired. Dad decided to stay with her after we left, which was mistake number 1. And I got a call later that night and this is the common thing that she hated him, was cruel to him and clearly she's cheating on him and has moved on and he was done with her.

Frankly for a child even an adult one hearing that is not cool and no explanation was going to suffice.

He also accused the staff at my mom's facility of not doing their jobs and taking care of her.

Now in the past, I would try to calm him down, try to convince him otherwise, and tell him to take a couple of days away and get back to seeing her, because when he's normal he's very good at talking to her and getting her to eat etc.

But this time, I unloaded, I've become the primary with my Dad because and I don't blame them, my sisters have had enough of this act, and my one sister who I don't talk to has completely disconnected from mom and dad except to lecture us all on what we're doing wrong.

Anyways, I decided that I needed a respite and avoided my Dad's call for a few days, because it was always the same, he'd ask if we visited her, if she talked about him, and then go on a rant about one of the workers there that she was having an affair with. For crying out loud she's 89 and in deep dementia, she has zero interest in the people around her and sleeps like 20 hours a day.

I finally talked to him and tried to be sympathetic, I get why he's doing it, because to see her in this state is hard. But I told him if he bought up the cheating stuff that I was hanging up, I didn't want to talk to him about it. I told him not to go see her on his own because he was manufacturing reasons to make it about him and his hurt feelings.

I told him when I was good and god damned ready and my sister in Calgary was ready, we would take him down twice a week and do family visits and that's it period end of story.

Because I realized these things.

My mom tires out quickly and when she's tired her mood alters and she become moody and distracted and my dad would read it as she hates me etc. So we would go and visit if she was sleeping we would try to wake her, if she didn't want to we'd leave and try again at the next meeting. If we were visiting and we could see she was getting tired, we would end the visit by walking her to a care worker who would then sit with her or put her to bed.

That he had to change his mind set. My Sister and I know that 90% of the time Mom has no clue who we are, so we chat with her, bring in a take out pizza or a burger as a treat and act as a care giver. Dad has to realize the same thing, and if we see him getting emotional that we're taking him out for a walk.

At the same time, I told him that on the day's that he's not visiting he's got to fill his days. Not sit in his room and mope and watch TV. I mean he does his painting which is great, but he does it by himself.

I told him that the place he's at has a church service, he's going. That he has to sit down and eat dinner with people instead of by himself, and that he is to take his books down to the common area to read and talk to new people.

Here's a warning and a thought, if one parent has dementia its painful for the others and if they have trouble comprehending what is happening they will literally make it about them and their feelings, and if its too painful they'll make up reasons or lie about things or make up fiction to make it not their fault. I know this doesn't happen in every case, but talking to some folks that work with dementia its common.

Ok here's the epilogue in the holding my breath while holding a grenade with no pin in it. We took Dad out to see Mom yesterday, his first visit in three weeks. We took him for a nice lunch first. Then we again discussed how it was going to work. It wasn't a long visit, no more then 45 minutes, we bought Pizza for her and she really didn't like it this time. Appetites and flavors change. We chatted with her about literally nothing, my Dad helped her eat, and it was a pleasant enough visit. But when we saw her getting tired, we cut the visit off, and coached Dad not to tell her that he would see her in a few days, or to cry in front of her. Then we left, let him have a cry and told him that from now on we would do Wednesday and Sunday visits.

He seemed to feel that it was a good visit and was satisfied.

However and this is phase two of my so called brilliant advice.

Never thing that the issue is solved, never thing that the positives of a visit are going to carry out. That grenade could explode again, we could go in and have a really bad visit and things could get dark again.

If you are in the same situation, with a parent that struggling with a spouse with this awful disease, I think its really important to control the environment, its super important to for lack of a better way of saying it, support the spouse so they don't interpret things based on their feelings at the time.

Again parents become the children and its sad.

Anyways, again, I'm here if anyone is going through this situation.