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A few days before Easter, my husband and I took Mom out shopping and helped her pick out 3 1 lb chocolate Easter bunnies - one for each of her great-grandchildren. At Christmas we had helped her pick out gifts for them, but by Christmas morning, she couldn't understand why they were thanking her for things she never remembered seeing before.

We thought we'd prevent that at Easter by "hiding" the Easter rabbits in her refrigerator and get them when we picked her up that morning so she could give them directly to them. (Many of you already know where this is going...) When we opened her refrigerator Easter morning, there was just one bunny head left. She'd eaten 2 1/2 lbs of chocolate in less than 48 hours. All by herself.

I asked her what happened and she said that she had no idea why she had bought so much chocolate, but she was almost done with it and was pretty tired of chocolate.

We have a saying around here "Dementia Always Wins". No matter how hard we try, dementia always gets the upper hand.

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Elizabeth, I have learned to live in the moment with my mother-in-law. Her dementia has gotten to the point, that I repeat myself 100's of times while we're together. One of the things I've come to appreciate is, she is a pleasant person who is easy to be around. Even though she lives in asst. living, she and I spend lots of time together running around etc. BUT just last week she fell and broke her other hip, and her fragile dementia brain took a big hit. I stayed with her through the emergency room, operation and her transport to rehab/nursing home. She had NO idea as to what has happened, why she was NOT in her apartment, and why she couldn't leave this strange place. But what was the worst, was I took the day off, after arranging for her grand-daughters and her oldest son and his wife to come visit for that first day there. I was at the coast when my niece called and said that mil was having a meltdown. When my niece told mil that I was on the phone and wanted to talk to her, mil literally put her fingers in her ears and kept screaming 'no no no no'. It was awful, and totally new territory for me. When she did finally take her fingers out of her ears, she accused me of 'putting me in this place, no one told me about this, you did this before, it's all your fault' etc. She was a screaming meme at that point, so there was absolutely no way of talking to her. Eventually she was given a pill, did some PT (grudgingly) and fell asleep. I am so afraid that her demented brain will never get back to "normal" after this shock of breaking yet another hip. So that's why I live in the moment, take the good when I can, and ask the Lord for patience, humility and love for this thing that I do. Take care.
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I'm so sorry, NancyH. What a wonderful daughter-in-law you are! Can you imagine how confusing their worlds are? You are very precious to care so much.

We have my mother with us today and this is the first time she's ever been to our house (according to her). We drove through a car wash on the way here and she told us that she'd never seen anything like that before. We had a good laugh over that because for years it has been a family joke that years ago a tow truck was called to get Mom out of a car wash when she "just tried to straighten up a little bit" when she was in a car wash and got off track. I guess there's some good in forgetting the bad. :)

My husband and I were just talking about this. The only good thing about dementia is that there is a lot of opportunities for "do overs". (It's also the bad news about dementia...) A few hours ago I used a frustrated voice with her and then just a moment ago I had regained my composure and told her how pretty she always looks and that's all that is on the radar now.

Thank you, Lord, for do-overs in this instance.

I pray God's best for you in this situation. I 'm not sure I could do this for anyone but my mother.
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