Life With My Grandma

Dear Diary,

I always thought that I could handle anything but when my grandma was diagnosed with dementia, it broke my heart in two. It feels as if I am watching everything slowly slip away from her. I am so used to her being incredibly independent and now she depends on us for so much more than she used to. I wish there was a way that I could help her to regain some of the independence that she once had before this all happened.

It truly saddens me to realize that she is going to progressively get worse. There are many people that I talk to that say that she is ninety - one years old and that she has lived a full life. It still hurts me to see what I am seeing. Watching a once highly active woman lying around in her bed for the majority of her day is truly depressing. The fact that she cannot remember what we told her ten minutes ago scares me. I am truly dreading the day that we wake up and she cannot even remember us. I do not know how to handle taking care of her she cannot even remember that we are related or for that matter my name.

One of the things that is the most difficult things to deal with right now is the mood swings. I know that it is the dementia but when one moment a person is incredibly happy and laughing and the next moment they are crying hysterically, it is a difficult pill to swallow for the people around them. When she gets that beside herself I do not know what to do to help her. I hate that feeling of complete helplessness. I hate not having a clue what to say when she tells me that she wishes she was dead. How the heck to comfort someone when they are that sad that they wish they were not alive? I wish I had the answer to that question. I also struggle terribly when she starts screaming at my mother for something that seems petty to me because I know that to her it is a big deal. I want to comfort her for my mother doing something that she did not like or that she wanted done differently. At the same time, I want to comfort my mother for getting yelled at for something that is completely petty and ridiculously for my grandmother to be upset about. I truly feel as if I am stuck between a rock and a hard place.

My heart does not want to talk to my family about it because they are all dealing with it as well. I do not want to sound like I am having a poor me moment. It is just the fact that I am not doing well with handling any of this . I am losing sleep over what is yet to come. The stress is seriously beginning to affect my health in a negative way. My stomach is a mess I would say about eighty percent of the time. All my head wants to do is share the truth with my family about how this affecting me. Yet I think that I am afraid about how they would react to the way that I am reacting to this situation. It feels like I am stuck between a rock and a hard place. If I don't say something to them soon it may land me in the hospital with a stomach ulcer yet if I do say something they are liable think that I am overreacting.

Some people seem to think that the best thing for me to do is to get the heck out of the situation as soon as humanly possible. My problem with that is that I have nowhere else to go plus the fact that honestly running away from the situation in my opinion is not going to solve the problem. In fact, it is liable to cause even more problems. I do not need my family accusing me of deserting my grandmother in her time of need. I do not need the permanent rift it would probably causing within my family.

I guess that I am going to have to stick it. I have to take life day by day. Stop worrying about what is to come and just live in the present. I cannot predict or affect what is going to happen in the future so why worry about it. Take a deep breath and live.

Megan