Living a crazy life.
This morning I stripped the sheets from my mother's bed. I am always in for a new surprise when I do her bed. Over time she has built a fortress around her bed. She has covered the floor with quilts. She has suitcases and a hamper at the foot of the bed. She has 3 blankets on the bed, along with the sheets. This morning I found blankets stuffed under the bed, like she is trying to keep anything from getting under there or getting out. She has a little wall of rolled up blankets around the upper part of the bed, leaving her a place in the middle to lay. She only stays in her bed half the night. She sleeps on the sofa the second half of the night. I've asked her why she is doing these things and always get the answer that she is trying to keep the cold air out that is coming in. I get this answer in summer, too, even when she might complain that it is too warm.
This disturbs me, because it isn't easy to live with craziness. It also makes cleaning her room impossible. It is also dangerous. I take things up. She puts them down. This happens repeatedly.
I don't know what to do. The medical people don't seem to care much. We've tried two antidepressants with bad results. I don't really know if this is dementia. If she has dementia, it isn't a normal type dementia. It is almost like she is fighting internal demons or demons that hide under her bed and in the floor. But she won't talk about them. She keeps anything that means anything buried inside her. I guess so she doesn't seem crazy.
I don't know why I'm writing this. I want to get her to a geri psych again, but she doesn't want to go. Nothing is wrong with her. Sometimes I feel more like we need to get a Catholic priest in to perform an exorcism of the room. I try to just keep living life, knowing that all is not well. But when I wash sheets it hits me all again about how bad it really is. It feels like I'm keeping an asylum... or that maybe I'm one of the inmates.
Our parents, particularly our mothers, had to hide so much. Maybe there are feelings that were pushed down. I wouldn't be surprised if only the daughters get to see the "unsweet" side. Babalou, when you talked about your mother it did make me wonder if she has some unfiltered guilt and shame from her younger years. When the brain is damaged, we can only speculate about what is then and what is now. Having people expect you to be like June Cleaver had to be tough. (I wonder what June would have been like if the cameras weren't on her.)
As her vascular dementia took hold, some terrible anxiety about being bad in some way emerged. I have no idea if she actually did something wrong or if this is a delusion of some sort. But when stressed and off antianxiety meds, she weeps, wings her hands and talks incoherently about taxes and going to h*ll. It's heart breaking. I think that there is a lot of unwed trauma and mental dysfunction in our parents' generation.
To start, we got mom on antianxiety meds.