The last couple  of months have been EXTREMELY difficult and unfortunately it’s only going to get worse as the time goes by. My emotions have been on one hell of a rollercoaster ride. From getting home damage from hurricane Ian to my mom developing dementia from having two strokes.

Life is so precious and we all take life for granted. We don’t sit down and think about what we’re doing or going to do necessarily, but at one time or another we had a few occasions where we don’t think we just know what we have and don’t think twice.

When my mom had the two strokes I was in a constant state of panic and fear. I panicked because I didn’t know or understand the outcome of the damage that the strokes had on my mom’s brain. The non-stop fear of not knowing what was ahead of me and what was going to happen.

Not knowing left me in a permanent state of trepidation. I couldn’t understand the way that the strokes had taken effect on my mom’s life. Every since she had the strokes she hasn’t been the same.  She’s always scared, confused, worred and paranoid. The strokes caused brain damage and the damage made her dementia more difficult and more severe. She started off with only having small episodes of fear and confusion.  Now that it’s been almost three months the dementia has taken a turn for the worse. She is now struggling with anxiety, hallucinations, delusions, depression and is starting to lose her memory. The memory loss is from the strokes but now it’s from the dementia.

For those who don’t know what dementia or what a stroke is let me explain them to you. A stroke is Damage to the brain from lack of blood supply.                                  Dementia is  a chronic or persistent disorder of the mental processes caused by brain disease or injury and marked by memory disorders, personality changes, and impaired reasoning.

Basically those who  are effected with dementia will eventually pass away. It just depends on the other person. Some take a year while others take up to 3 or 4 years.

Watching my mom deteriorate is breaking my heart in countless of peices. Say things that don’t make sense and to be told the truth yet they can’t comprehend anything that you say. Watching my mom cry really tears me up inside. Seeing her struggle and be constantly confused and scared hurts my heart and my feelings. I try to be positive and go with the flow of the dementia. As she slowly slips away and constantly worried about what’s happening or what’s going on. They aren’t able to understand what you say eventuality and they may lose their memory with remembering names, names of places and do simply tasks such as combing their hair or even taking a shower. They are there physically but not really all the way there mentally like they should be.

Please don’t yell or act out on them because believe it or not but they won’t remember what happened so it’s pointless. It’s hard to stay calm and positive. Just  trust me it truly is very difficult. They won’t understand why your yelling at them and all you’ll be doing is making the situation worse. They could get to the point where you’ll need to do everything for them as if they were babies.