Mother update

So, I spoke to my mother last Tuesday, and was shocked to find she was pleasant. She was a little vague and spacey, and seemed to be trying to multitask, unsuccessfully. Not overly crazy. Which, frankly is a bit of a change.

A quick family history suggests vascular dementia and Parkinson's might run in the family, but who the hell knows for sure.

It looks like the circle of hells are as follows, Al- in the thick of it, me- peripherally involved, and then everyone else. A vast sea of people to whom I can rehash the painful details for sympathy, but I wish I didn't feel so alone in this. I know this is self pity talking, and once I adjust I'll be less melancholy.

As I was moping I remembered talking to a coworker, whose wife had a similar experience to mine, an only child with a mother who was mean, but who got nicer with dementia. In some ways it almost seems like a cruel joke, I had decided to not make an effort anymore, 3 cards a year was what I had decided was fair, Knowing I would get Nothing back. Now, she is nice, and demented. There is some irony or something at work here, maybe karma?

My mother has Dementia

So, yesterday evening my stepfather made what was probably a very hard phone call to me.

He said that my mother has dementia, this is not surprising to me, still it's hard to hear.

He says on a scale from 1 to 10, that she is a two, but she has recently become incontinent, I would argue that she is more like an eight, and an argument for my judgement is I do not live with her so her crazy seems more crazy, and when I have talked to her (last summer) she has had trouble following the conversation, and gets thoughts stuck in her head that she can't stop and move on with the conversation. My friend Sabine also has concluded that my mom is crazy as a loon, Sabine called my mom after my surgery to tell her I came out of it fine, but my mom could not recognize that she was not talking to me, this was May 6, 2010.

I didn't ask, and it didn't seem as though Al (the stepfather) had taken her to an actual doctor for a diagnosis.
I want to bug him about it, but it's for him to decide, and for him to do. It is very unlikely that a specific diagnosis will change her prognosis, especially since there is a family history of a type of dementia.

My mom's cousin has Parkinson's and this might be a possibility, but my mind keeps going back to my grandmother having had evidence of tiny strokes, which is vascular dementia. I don't believe it is the Gregson Crud as my mother has called it. Or at least I do not think it is our exclusive illness.

I'm not sure how much contact I will have with my mom in the future, I don't think her being demented will improve our relationship, she is still a bit of a bully, and how much do you have to put up with really in this sort of situation.

I really feel for Al, the stepfather, because to be perfectly frank, he might be living my nightmare. I feel guilty for saying that... God, family is complicated, especially if estranged.