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No one comes to visit and we don’t go anywhere with anyone. Along with his dementia he is in deep depression and I have joined him.

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I’m sorry for your situation. My husband is bedridden and his relationship with his family has deteriorated to the point that we get a Christmas card from one sister and that’s it. No one has called or emailed for 2 years. One friend did call about a year ago, but my husband doesn’t like to talk on the phone and I have always wondered if this friend didn’t feel like he was getting the old “bum’s rush”. So, sometimes it’s not always the fault of the friends. If, like some people with dementia, your husband tends toward angry outbursts, people may not want to expose themselves to that.

When a loved one suffers from this disease, the whole family comes along. We can flap and doodle about taking care of ourselves, getting out and doing things, etc., but not many of us have the ambition or the time. Truth is, if we let ourselves slide down that slope, no one’s going to stop us. No one will pick us up, dust us off and pat us on the head. We have to do the picking up and dusting off ourselves.

For the last few years, I’ve been knitting hats for the needy in my city. I buy yarn on sale. I can be here in case my husband needs me. I sit every day and work on the hats. Last Christmas, I had 27 hats done.

Chat with your doctor, and his. Get on some meds. See if there’s an online support group in addition to this one. If your friends have abandoned you, maybe they weren’t worth having as friends.Have you tried calling them? This life, living with someone with a Broken Brain, can only beat you down into the ground if you let it.
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MargaretMcKen Dec 2018
Dear Joy, perhaps you would like to make a beanie for the Alice Springs Beanie Festival (surely the only one in the world). This last year, there were 7000 beanies in it, and some of them are insane! and fun! look up beaniefest.org and have a look. Alice Springs is a great place where people have to make their own fun, population 26,000 (and 7000 beanies)!
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So sorry but it seems others cannot deal with someone else's sickness. They don't know what to do or say. I felt so sorry for my Mom. Brothers never took the time to visit and she was a good Mom. Friends didn't visit. Not even the minister at the Church she worked hard for.
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Caregiving is a lonely, isolating job. People don't know how to deal with the sick and it is especially true with Alzheimer's and dementia.

Find a support group or 2 you can meet with, hopefully you can hire an aid to come in so you can get out a bit.

Hugs and love to you!
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Dear dear Ahmijoy, it is so nice to read that you are feeling a little better after Christmas. You have to know that you help many people here, and that you are really loved and appreciated by hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people. Perhaps Kathy can do as well as you do week in and week out. Love to you both.
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Ahmijoy Dec 2018
Oh my, Margaret, your kind and loving words have made my day, my week and my year. Thank you so much! My opinions are not always accepted but they all come from a part of me that wants to help. I’d like to think I’m doing well, but there are so many challenges! We all have them, don’t we? My Christmas did fall apart as neither my grandson nor I were feeling that well. I’m hoping to have my family here in a few weeks, though.

I understand completely how Kathy feels. Sometimes the feelings of abandonment, real or imagined, are worse than the actual caregiving duties themselves. The loneliness we feel while others go on with their lives reminds us that things have changed, not for the better, will never be the same and it’s far from fair.

My heart hurts for all of us on this site who deal with this unfairness day in and day out. I send up prayers every day that each day at the least one of them finds some peace.
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Perhaps we need to think about how we should ‘entertain’ visitors, even if it isn’t a nice thought. If they come for a visit, probably all we can talk about is the problems of caregiving. We haven’t done anything ‘nice’ recently, and we aren’t feeling all that ‘nice’ either. We want to ‘share’ something that no-one in their right mind would want to share. Caregivers are stressed, over-burdened, bored, miserable. It’s going to make our old friends unhappy, guilty that they can’t do more, even if they do understand and sympathise. But for carers, talking about anything else is ignoring ‘the elephant in the living room’.

I and my DH went through this when we had a serious fire, caused accidentally by DH, and were then sued for several hundred thousand dollars by the fraudulent neighbours who surrounded us. This lasted for 7 years, and none of our own friends could believe it was true. We just went into a cave – we couldn’t talk about anything else sensibly, and no-one else wanted to know. It is really really hard on all sides. All you can do is wait for the whole thing to finish.
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Kathy718
I know most of us have been, or are, in your shoes. I'm sure these friends don't mean to hurt us, even though they do.
It is helping me to redefine "friends". To my thinking, a friend is someone who is there when you need them(and when you don't), tells you the truth(even when it hurts), and, even if they have never experienced what you are feeling, tries to understand and relate to how you feel.
I am finding all of that on this website and starting to look for certain names, as I know their advice will be truthful and from the heart. And yes, even though they don't know it, I am beginning to think of them as friends.
Some of these people are Ahmijoy, Isthisrealyreal, MargaretMcKen,Cwillie, etc, etc.
Since I have called them out.... I should also thank all of them for making me feel less alone......
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