mental health

mum's mental health has deteriorated significantly over the last 2 months. nowadays, she can forget about things that happened just minutes ago and also, she can ask me things repeatedly up to 4-5 times within half an hour without realizing it. can be rather irritating if i do not know of her condition, which is related to old age. here's a few examples that reflect her deterioration.

i have been keeping close supervision of her these 2 months since i am not working. and lately, i was also extra careful about the stuff she ate given her recent bouts of flu and hospitalizations. added to that, she had her birthday celebrations makan, which was done over several evenings. despite all these, she told me she was kept hungry and did not have a full meal. initially, i thought she was indeed hungry and gave her more food, but it came to a point where i think it is not true and that what she said is probably not to be taken seriously. just take yesterday for example, she had a mug of warm barley drink for breakfast, had mee sua (twice the normal serving) for lunch, rojak and another mug of barley for afternoon tea, and for dinner... hmmm, she had satay, chicken wings, zichar dinner and another mug of warm barley... and after dinner, when she was already struggling with space in her stomach, she down another slice of birthday cake... and on our way home, she told me that despite all the food and drinks, she did not pee the whole day. and that was unusual.

this morning, when she woke up, she complained that she had had a bad night and that she had wounds at her buttocks. and that her wounds was so bad the wound discharge wetted the bed. feeling suspicious, i went to check on her "wounds" and found no wounds there. instead, there was a little redness. my conclusions is that she had sat too long in the wheelchair. as for her so called wound discharge, my inspection of the bed revealed that she had peed onto the mattress. it was so wet, 3/4 of the bedsheet was soaked with her urine. once again, she complained and pondered (yes, she could actually pondered, then complained) that she was ill becos of the prawn she ate. that the 2-3 small sized prawns made her aggravated her wounds. and as she spoked, she changed her conclusion that the barley drinks had made her sick, and even before she could conclude this, she affirmed her own "suspicion" by iterating that my brother's mil said her legs were swollen...

challenging person. i reminded her that i ate everything she ate and i was not sick. and i asked her to take a look at her legs to check if it was swollen. no, she said, and i told her that she felt this way becos she had gorged herself sick. and she swore blind that she was left hungry yesterday. and for that matter, hungry for many days. and added that she dare not say it becos i was unemployed. omg! this is a very challenging mum indeed. i held my breath and thought about it, and it struck me that the behaviour she had displayed was no different from many cases of dementia patient... and i cooled down.

and i left it as it was. my mum is slowly being reduced to someone i do not recognize anymore. her forgetfulness is creating all sorts of unnecessary tensions on me. for a start, i will stop responding to her repeated asking for food, or at most, give a small portion. if not, she will eat till she explode and still, she'll say she's hungry. just need to manage. just need to manage. and as some of my friends said. it is probably being arranged by someone up there for me to be unemployed currently so that i can look after her.