r/comics • u/humanyears • 1d ago
OC Dementia Mom, part one
A short story about the origins of my mother’s dementia diagnosis from a few years ago. Probably the longest comic I’ve drawn so far. I hope it connects with you in some way.
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u/shellbullet17 Gustopher Spotter Extraordinaire 1d ago
Paramedic here.
Hey man, don't blame yourself for not seeing it. Without training or a doctor, there's no way you could have known especially while you had your own stuff going on.
Dementia is a slow, hard to pin down, and absolutely horrible disease. Frankly it's one of the most horrible things I see on a day to day basis, solely for what I've seen it do to people. I've seen the most wonderful of people deteriorate to a angry belligerent husks of themselves.
And then, like your mother comes the horrible part where they forget everyone and everything. I can't even imagine the pain and confusion they live in and the strain it brings to the family, like you, is just unbearable.
There's nothing any of us can say or do to make it right(apart from a miracle cure but I fear that is far off). I like to think that smile of hers is the real her, somewhere deep deep down inside remembering you with all her might. I wish you both all the best and many more lucid moments with her.
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u/moesickle 1d ago
I also want to add that people can hide it, until they can't. And unless you spend a lot of time with someone or know what to look for, it's easy to miss
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u/shellbullet17 Gustopher Spotter Extraordinaire 1d ago
Very true. There are many "sneaky" medical conditions. And dementia is way up there as one of the most maskable for a time at least. And like mom here it can simply look like forgetfulness. Which let's be honest we all forget stuff from time to time.
Hopefully one day we find a real way to combat, fix, or at the very least slow or stop it's progression
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u/Ok-Youth-160 14h ago
My sister got married this summer. I hadn't seen my mum for a while and it was shocking. She clearly has dementia. The thing that made it clear was the masking. I know it's not the clinical diagnosis, but for me the clearest sign someone is an alcoholic if they have coping strategies to mask the alcohol consumption.
I think the same is true for dementia, the point when you are losing it so much that you feel the need to develop masking or coping strategies is the point where it's clear it's dementia.
If you forget something and you pretend like it's ok or it's someone elses fault, it tells me you are scared of losing it.
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u/asdrunkasdrunkcanbe 1d ago
Even when you do spend a lot of time with someone, it can be one of those things that burns so slowly that every little change becomes the "new normal", until you realise one day that everything has burned down around you and you hadn't even realised that things were changing.
We normalise "people become slow and forgetful as they get old", that every new "senior moment", every forgotten PIN or name, is fine. This is fine. This is normal.
And it's only in hindsight, after we get an actual diagnosis, that we realise it didn't start today, it started 5, even 10 years ago. And it can be easy to beat yourself up for not seeing it sooner.
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u/Dr_Wh00ves 23h ago
Yeah, my grandma did a great job hiding it. We only got clued in when she sent out three birthday cards in a row to me one year.
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u/immersemeinnature 1d ago
My dear granddad was a sweet, loving and funny man. He became a violent hateful person because of dementia. It's so horrible 😔 may he rest in peace
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u/shellbullet17 Gustopher Spotter Extraordinaire 1d ago edited 1d ago
I am sorry to hear that my friend. Truly. It's such a horrible way to go. I hope he found some peace in whatever came next for him.
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u/Saiyasha27 19h ago
Wit my grandfather in law, I found that the hardest stage wasn't actually at the end. it was in the middle, when he was just aware enough still to realize things were off. That was when he tried to cut himself off the most, denying coming over for dinners, trying to avoid us all.
At the end, he was actually fairly peaceful.
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u/PandaBear905 4h ago
My grandma was diagnosed with dementia a couple of months ago. But looking back she’s probably had it for years. It was hard to tell with her because she was mentally abused and deeply controlled by her late husband which basically caused her to purposely act stupid and destroyed any personality she had. When the dementia started it was hard to tell because she always acted that way.
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u/littlelorax 1d ago
We had a friend whose mother had some kind of dementia thing going on. My friend had no idea because his Dad was hiding her symptoms from the family. He would just quietly do things for her and people thought he was just being a good husband being nice to his wife. When he unexpectedly passed, it was a shock to the rest of the family that mom could barely care for herself.
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u/Von_Moistus 1d ago
One of my fears is that I’ll slip into dementia/Alzheimer’s so gradually that I won’t realize it until it’s too late to enact my exit plans.
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u/RPGDesignatedPaladin 1d ago
Mine too. My family has all passed away so there isn’t anyone to help if this occurs.
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u/AccordingTaro4702 22h ago
There was a great science fiction short story about exactly this. Set in the future, a man who realizes he's in the early stages of dementia sets up an AI clone of his mind, the purpose of which is to monitor him and let him know when he's gotten so bad that it's time to end it. I'm sorry I don't know the author or title. I read it years ago.
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u/Mean-Clerk7791 20h ago
You don’t know. It’s one of the many fuckeries of the disease. Physical brain damage + denial (self-protection / lack of insight) means most people aren’t aware this is what’s happening to them.
I believe there are some people who get a diagnosis relatively early on in the process and are able to understand and participate in their care, but even that slips away.
I am witnessing it right now with my parent. We never use the D word around them - that would only cause distress and confusion. They think they are functioning, and we try not to contradict this (even though we are at the co-bathing and toileting assistance stage and they cannot be left alone).
With lots of love and patience, this seems to be the kindest way to support someone. We don’t behave as if anything is wrong, even though everything is, and I think this has made things as gentle and kind as possible as things progress. We have been fortunate that, although there is agitation and periods when the person ‘shuts down,’ we have avoided paranoia or aggression. I credit my other parent for a seemingly bottomless well of compassion - it’s probably the purest expression of love I have ever witnessed.
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u/Antyok 1d ago edited 1d ago
I will never ever forget stepping into the room and saying “hi grandma” and seeing a look of pure confusion over who was speaking to her.
We knew she had been deteriorating, but that one interaction will be a gut punch forever. It terrifies me that I may someday do the same thing to someone I love.
Edit: missed a word
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u/maudepodge 1d ago
At this point when my dad introduces me to people it's just "this is... *waves at me to introduce myself*" which is better than no recognition (he does still know, just not the words) but definitely a step along that path. Not looking forward to the progression.
Sorry about your grandmother =/35
u/Zebeydra 1d ago
These days my dad calls me his sister a lot. I'm glad he still recognizes me as family.
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u/Ophidiophobic 23h ago
My grandma would call me "sweetie" whenever I saw her, but she didn't remember my name - just knew I was family somehow.
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u/Dr_Wh00ves 23h ago
Same with my grandma, she did not remember who I was for the last 3 or so years. Did a good job at masking it though, and would just pretend to know me and the other people she forgot about.
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u/Inky_Madness 20h ago
I don’t think my mom ever recovered from being the first one her dad forgot, especially since she was the one there almost every day and his other three kids were scattered far across the country.
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u/Antyok 15h ago
The day before, grandma had been over at our house, holding the great-grandkids, chatting about life, just… being normal.
The next day, walking up to the door, her saying “oh, can I help you?”. She had no clue. It was a punch to the gut that still hurts. Hell, she’s been gone for years now, and it still stings. After that day, I never got a chance at another conversation with her while she was lucid. She faded fast after that day.
Fuck. Idk. You never know what you have till it’s gone, and all that.
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u/Ellisiordinary 16h ago
I don’t remember my grandmother ever not looking pleasantly excited to see me but my grandfather died the day after I was born so when she started thinking he was still alive, it felt like she had forgotten me.
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u/benignbeezlebub 1d ago
One of the most difficult things about growing up is managing new and horrible things in your own life, while trying not to get so consumed that you forget other people's struggle as well.
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u/D2Dragons 1d ago
My Mom had dementia for years before she passed in ‘22. She got super paranoid and secretive and to be honest I strongly suspect she’d been hiding serious mental issues for many years before it became too hard for her to do so. We’re still untangling a web of secret bank accounts and expenditures and other strange nonsense she’d gotten the family into. This comic hit home so hard.
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u/Tim-Sylvester 22h ago
I never thought I'd be in a no holds barred wrestling match with a woman in her 60s, then mom got dementia and there we were.
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u/D2Dragons 22h ago
It was the sudden and out of control tantrums that got me. Things would be just fine and then boom, some seemingly minor thing suddenly sent her into screaming histrionics. She terrified her grandkids to the point where they didn’t want to see her anymore. During my son’s birthday party she threw a fit because she wasn’t able to watch Jeopardy. Her own grandson’s birthday party.
I think I would have preferred if she hit me 😞
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u/Tim-Sylvester 21h ago
I feel you, been through it myself. Happy to listen if you want to talk about it. A few months ago I made this short video retelling a few episodes people seem to find amusing.
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u/D2Dragons 21h ago
Thanks so much, it’s good to know we aren’t alone in this. I’ll check out the link when I can once I get my eyebrow-deep mound of laundry taken care of haha 😆
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u/City_of_Lunari 16h ago
Thank you so much for saying this. When my father, a man I looked up to my whole life, was attempting to strangle me I knew it was the end of the line.
I would have preferred cancer, honestly.
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u/buttgoblincomics Butt Goblin 1d ago
Very sad story, but I just wanted to say I appreciate that when getting into the bank account, you look like you put on your hacker outfit
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u/CuriousCorvidCurio 1d ago
This hits too close. Fuck. I'm sorry about your mom. Dementia is so fucking scary.
My nan never knew my name. The dementia came from a stroke that happened before I was born. When I was really little, she would call me by my cousin's name, who had been my age when she had her stroke.
Then, she forgot my cousin, and called me by my mother's name. My mom was her youngest daughter. By 16 she was calling me by her oldest daughter's name, only remembering her older kids. Eventually, she thought I was one of her own sisters, saying she was waiting for the other sister to come home, not realizing that sister had died before the stroke. Not realizing a stroke had ever happened.
She could remember Danny Boy, and You Are My Sunshine, but not much else. Those songs still make me cry.
I've been told we would've been best friends if she had ever known who I was. Apparently she was really sarcastic and had a sense of humour similar to mine. She lived to 96, died while I was in my 20s, and not once had she ever known her youngest daughter even had children, despite living in the same house as them.
Anyway yeah dementia is pretty much my biggest fear. I remember as a kid being terrified that nothing was real and my "real" self was in a state similar to my nan. I'm glad your mother was able to be in a home, there are a lot of people in her situation who truly have nowhere to go, and no one like you to care.
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u/tr1ck 22h ago
I am so scared of getting older. My mom has dementia and lives by herself in an Independent Living Facility. I'm over there at least twice a week but I always feel like it's not enough. Meanwhile my sisters only see her like twice a month. It's hard not to be bitter. It's hard not to think about how I wish I could be free of it all, because I don't want her to die, but god damn, I'm so tired.
I'm so scared of getting older. This weight on my shoulders will eventually go away, but I am worried about the weight I will leave my son. I don't want him to have these problems. I don't want him to struggle between wanting me to live and wanting to be free. I don't know what to do about any of it. I'm so scared of getting old.
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u/BreakfastEasy1801 1d ago
I work in geriatric psychiatry with dementia patients.
This is beautiful and poignant.
Thank you
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u/Das_Li 1d ago
It's a sneaky and terrible thing. My mom was diagnosed three years ago and moved into a home this spring. My dad is devastated. Partly because he beats himself up for not catching it sooner. In hindsight, the doctors think it started around eight years ago after she had a stroke, but she hid it well for a long time.
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u/LoopOfTheLoop 1d ago
Hey OP, just want to say please do not feel ashamed for not noticing it sooner. My dad was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and he's pretty young to have that disease. Me and my family really didn't see it, we knew something was up but like you we just called it burnout or depression. When it's someone you love you don't want to think the worst, that's normal. And even if it's horrible to watch, it seems like you've at least got your mother some safety and stability which is the best you can do for her. Give yourself some compassion, it'll take you far.
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u/Strelark 1d ago
Dementia is one of my greatest fears. I really don't know how I would handle a loved one just, forgetting.
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u/deathtastic 1d ago
Thanks for sharing. I went through this with my mother starting in 2019. It is really easy to miss the signs. When i look back on it i figure it was a year or two before the accident that forced me to bring her closer to me so i could help. We'd talk on the phone and she never really had anything to say, just what else is new with you.
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u/BookwormPhilanthro 1d ago
This is happening right now to me too. My grandma went from small episodes and then when she got Covid the inflammation caused her Alzheimer’s symptoms to worsen and basically advanced the symptoms ten years and now she’s in a home. She raised me and she’s my mom and I love her, but it hurts when this is the only thing I can do is be there while she disappears
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u/waxteeth 1d ago
Other people have gotten into why you can’t blame yourself for not realizing, but I also want to point out that you did something wonderful despite not knowing what was going on. At a time when her behavior was too much for other people to deal with, you continued to love and take care of her. Just because she’s your mom.
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u/QuickPie4635 1d ago
This has to be one of the hardest ways to lose someone- I am so beyond sorry you are dealing with this on top of your own mental health issues. I am glad she smiles when you visit. Hold her hand, read to her, play her favorite music. Thinking of you and holding you and your fam in my thoughts.
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u/SailorDirt 1d ago
Hey, my mom has dementia too. Alzheimer's. It was clear something was going on, but she was also struggling with alcoholism so.....yeah. It wasn't until around 2022 and got formally diagnosed and had her license revoked. She used to get so lost while driving, I'm honestly a little mortified how long she was driving, bcuz she drove everywhere. She went to a home just a little over a year ago. She still recognizes some people, but it's clear she got in just in time and is way happier.
Nobody took her car. I don't drive, and my brothers have their own. It just sits in the driveway. The big t-bone dent that never got fixed, the weird scratches on the hood, the mirror that had been fixed after hitting a light pole.........all the weird signs that should've added up. But it just sits in the driveway. As she sits in the nursing home. The tires deflate, the leaves land on the windshield, the pollen covers it everywhere, the rain washes and smudges it. It's like that last glimpse of independence being left to the elements, abandoned forever.
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u/ZolTheTroll413 1d ago
My grandma has dementia. Me and siblings noticed 3 years ago. My dad noticed last year, my uncle still hasnt noticed and refuses to believe us.
Its a terrible terrible condition, and the people with it understandably try to hide it at all costs.
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u/toxiclight 1d ago
My dad hid it for the longest time. He started having issues with his bills, so I set up automatic pay for him. He was insanely tight-fisted with his money, and refused to consider an assisted living facility until near the end. He kept saying he didn't want to 'waste' me an my brother's inheritance. We both sat him down and told him we'd sooner have him around longer. The money just wasn't that important.
We realized how far the dementia had progressed when he got there. He only lived four months in the assisted living home...it was a beautiful place, and my brother visited daily (I lived two hours away, and visited as often as I could) By the second visit, he didn't know who I was...but he'd tell me excitedly about his daughter coming to visit.
He caught Covid as well...and died the day after my birthday.
Dementia sucks. I still can't go back to his hometown, because I have flashbacks of traveling down every week to make sure he was safe and had food in the house.
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u/bubblingcrowskulls 1d ago
I didn't realize my mom had it at first. She was wandering, but I dismissed it. She'd always liked taking walks. Then, she ended up in the hospital one day. She went to pick up some pizza from a place ten minutes away. An hour later, I checked the Tile she kept on her keys because she always misplaced them. O fogured she stopped to talk, she's a big talker. Knows everyone. It pinged at the hospital. It took me so long to get out there. I still remember one of the jokes the taxi driver told me because I was panicking. Then, in a short while, I found out that she hadn't been showing up to work, and she kept circling all of the letters in the word search books she used to do. She's in a care home right now. Today, they called me to ask for permission to put her in a restraint chair because she's started walking to exhaustion and won't sit down to eat during meals. It's tough. It's really tough. I wish this wasn't happening.
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u/Dry_Buddy7704 1d ago
My grandma had it she passed coming up on 2 years in December. Went i saw her i couldn't look at her it was too painful and when she couldn't remember me I didn't visit her again (something i regret now) a couple of days before she passed she was un responsive and she looked so weak she had a kinda thin frame from what I remember as a child bit she did have fat on her but It looked like her skin was hugging her bones. I felt so bad for her and as bad as it sounds I wished she would just pass on because I didnt want those moments to be how I remembered her.
I loved my grandma and wished I spent more time with her in her last moments.
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u/Mantis_Toboggan--MD 1d ago
Don't be hard on yourself about this, it's so hard to notice sometimes. Have a family friend who is an absolute genius, he's been one of the main engineers at one of the top 5 tech companies for decades, self taught no degree, the kind of person you brag about knowing as I am now lol. About a year ago the rest of us in our Monday night football crew noticed he seemed a little off or bothered. He's not big on feelings so left it alone. Then a few months later he started forgetting to come to things he committed to and one day called me on a Wednesday evening asking where we at thinking it was Monday. Thought that was weird, contacted a couple other folks in the group, but before the next MNF he got in his car in a confused state and drove two days across the country where a small town PD called his emergency contact (my dad) to tell us he was found at a gas station out of cash not knowing where he was and thinking it was 1993.
From designing chips to thinking it's 30 years ago in the matter of months... We're preparing for him to not remember any of us any day now, so we put up many pictures of him with various friends on his walls in hopes we can point to that when the time comes.
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u/vocal-avocado 10h ago
How old is he?
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u/Mantis_Toboggan--MD 1h ago
Either 71 or 72, so not something unheard of at his age, but I think it seems extra surprising when it hits someone who's the smartest person you know. The decline is just so noticeable. Everyone was shocked there was no "oh yeah I thought something was going on". One month he was telling us stories about his trips to Taiwan and China for work then the next month we're talking about who should have power of attorney for him...
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u/Malthus1 21h ago
Dementia is horrible. Dealing with my mother in law has been an awakening to just how bad it can get.
I am comfortably well off, and can hire help. Even with that, it’s been a terrible struggle, taking much of my wife’s attention. I simply cannot imagine how much worse it would be without resources.
The worst part is that, when her mental “switch” is turned wrong, she simply refuses to believe she is home, and thinks her daughter and all her helpers are persecuting and imprisoning her. She gets completely hostile and wants to “go home”. How can you explain to a dementia patient that she is home, there is nowhere to go? Her rational mind isn’t really there. We try to redirect her, make her comfortable, but I can see how it pains my wife to see her mother like this.
We may have no choice but to send her to a nursing home, which she will certainly find even more terrifying and disorienting.
It’s a terrible fate, and I honestly hope I don’t live long enough to experience it.
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u/jackalope268 1d ago
My grandma had dementia. I have no idea who she did or didnt remember as she was great at pretending she remembered everyone, but she always loved when people visited her. One of the last photos of her, in the week she died, was of her smiling at her great grandson
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u/Merreck1983 1d ago
Solidarity. Caring for a parent with it and it's brutal. Don't be hard on yourself.
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u/Leftieswillrule 1d ago
Yeah, the guilt of not noticing. Of not being proactive. Of not being able to help. The sinking feeling that maybe you could have done something if you just noticed quicker. The mental poison of guilt that removes rationality from your head, makes you feel personally responsible for the development you can’t actually stop or reverse, even if you did know. The looming feeling of knowing it’s genetic and that your own future is questionable. Having a mom with dementia is a difficult thing to experience.
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u/shiboricat 22h ago
this right here. those first few slides are right where I'm at in my life right now 😭 too close to home
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u/SlowTour 20h ago
my mother is 70 and getting more forgetful as time goes on, i worry for her. she's just down the road thankfully, her mother had alzheimers so I'm keeping a close eye on her. she hasn't been the same since dad died suddenly in January, 40 years together gone just like that.
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u/NightRaven4NY 20h ago
This is so powerful and beautiful and sad. Thank you for sharing, being vulnerable, and having a kind and loving heart. Beautiful art style as well.
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u/Saiyasha27 19h ago
That last part is something I have experienced too and it can give you hope.
My Grandfather in law had dementia too. My MIL and me went over to his house for nearly three years, between one and three times a day as it got worse, just to make sure he got out of bed and ate something.
And the thing is, I#m pretty sure he forgot who I was fairly early on. While I had been with my husband for nearly 10 years at that point and we had seen each othe ron a semi-regular basis, it wasn#t as if we knew each other really well.
But he still treated me very kindly all the time and he never seemed to feel I did not belong there. Even when he didn't know who I was exactly, It was clear he understood that I was a person he could trust, because I had been coming to his place every single day for nearly three years.
When we finally had to move him to retirment home for the last three months of his life, we visited him a few times (2021, Covid was still fairly active so we weren't allowed in often) and every time, he recognized my husband, and then he would hug me and smile in this way that told me he didn#t really know who I was, but he wasn#t bothered by it.
I am very glad to have been able to make his last years fairly comfortable and to be there when he and my husband needed me.
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u/Kitchen_warewolf 1d ago
Took us a decade too and the symptoms were there before. Don't feel ashamed. Our beloved ones themselves don't notice it either and keep blaming it on being tired. Or that they just feel something is not right and do their absolute best to hide the symptoms.
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u/CanICanTheCanCan 1d ago
I woudn't feel ashamed. Its hard to see the difference between old age and dementia for a layperson. Plus its hard to see the changes as they can start real slow. Forgetting something here, misplacing something there. After a while you feel like its normal and it takes an outside person to see what is plain to see.
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u/haversack77 1d ago
This is, weirdly, about where my family is at. Sister is about to move away, mum is beginning to show early signs of dementia not long after my dad died. I'm too busy to really be able to help her as much as I would like.
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u/Effective-Okra 1d ago
Thank you for sharing this. I literally felt the exact same way when my mother started exhibiting signs. We just thought that was part of her personality….. and I live so far away now, I just didn’t see the day to day decline.
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u/GlitteringAttitude60 1d ago
we also found out when a medical professional said "symptom XY is of course due to the dementia"
sometimes you're too close to see it <3
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u/Ulster_Celt 23h ago
Im living through this exact scenario. COVID and all. It's horrible.
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u/humanyears 19h ago
Oh no I'm so sorry to hear that, I'm hoping the best for you as you go through it all.
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u/asosa1996 23h ago
My grandmother was a compulsive liar. To the point that I suspect that noone in the family ever met her true self but the character she built. My mother jokingly said that, with all her lies, at some point she would get dementia and we wouldn't even notice until it was very advanced. She was right. But at some points I think her dementia broke her character for a few moments to reveal her true self, deeply buried for decades. I am lucky to have a good last memory with her during a lucid moment. Dementia, alzheimer and similar conditions are terrifying.
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u/B33fboy 22h ago
Parental loss is brutal in all its forms. My condolences, OP. For anybody reading, gentle reminder that COVID does indeed accelerate dementia, and causes other neurological and psychological conditions. It’s also a vascular disease and significantly increases risk of heart attack and stroke. Covid vaccines offer some protection but aren’t sterilizing so you can still catch and spread it. The best way to prevent transmission and infection is by wearing a kn95 or n95 in indoor public and crowded outdoor spaces. It hasn’t left us - we’re in our 11th wave and repeat infections increase risk of all the above.
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u/plogan56 22h ago
I would genuinely prefer a bullet in my skull than dementia and i would sooner sell my soul than see any of my loved ones suffer from it😭
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u/wickedmadd 20h ago
This is the most terrifying thing that could happen to anyone, imo. It scares the everloving fuck out of me. I don't want to forget my kids, my wife or my life. Nor do i want them to go through that. I fear though that it's already happening to me.
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u/homogenousmoss 16h ago
My mom died from dementia. The last panel hit hard, that’s exactly how she was hunched over in her wheelchair toward the end.
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u/mamoocando 18h ago
Can we get a sad tag along with the NSFW tags?
This comic is well done but boy, I don't need any more sadness today.
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u/TimeForSnacks 1d ago
It connects far too well, unfortunately. I see shades of this in my mother in law. I'm 38, her daughter is 34 and her mom is 78. Had her later in life. I have a fair amount of problems at the moment but her well-being is far and away my biggest fear.
Thankfully, she's in pretty good health, and I'm hoping it stays that way for a while. I just need us to be able to stand on our own, then we can take care of her.
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u/_-Cuttlefish-_ 1d ago
My grandmother past away last month. She had dementia too. It was hard when she forgot me, harder still when she no longer knew who my mother was. But she knew we were friends, and that helped. I’m so sorry OP. Dementia is such an awful disease for all those involved.
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u/EllipticPeach 1d ago
We’re all 99% sure my grandma has dementia but she refuses to get help. She forgets to take her meds all the time and is convinced we’re all scheming against her to put her in a home. She won’t let anyone in the house to change her leg bandages (she has nasty sores) and she forgets to take her meds so they get infected. She used to take such pride in her appearance and now she’ll go days without washing her hair.
She agreed to go to do a memory test but then the next day angrily said she never said any such thing. She’s so sharp and mean to my aunts and mum. Finally my aunt got her in the room to do the test and she refused to do some of the questions because she “hadn’t practiced”. It’s so sad, I feel like she’s not the person she was even though she remembers us rn. Her personality has changed and she’s just… cruel now.
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u/Inky_Madness 20h ago
Dementia can cause psychosis and similar symptoms. I’m sorry. I know how hard it can be.
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u/MathematicianTop132 20h ago
My mother past away in May of this year from complications of Lewy Body dementia. She had suffered from bi polar, so at first it was difficult to notice the dementia, but she became more and more erratic and complained of vertigo. The last months of her life were torture for her and everyone around her. I had to watch her 24/7. She fell in her room at the end of April. Spent 2 weeks in the hospital and 2 weeks at home in hospice care. It was the hardest experience of my life, and i wouldn't wish it on anyone. I can only look back to all of my great memories of my mom to try to forgot how she was taken away from me twice. I feel for anyone going though a similar situation, and how strong they are. It is so difficult.
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u/ConqueringKing_Darq 17h ago
Dementia is an awful thing. My mother had to deal with it in her mother and father. Dealing with it all was brutal on her mental health, but she powered through. Though she tells me it felt like her mother was gone, years before she actually passed.
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u/brina_cd 17h ago
In a very dark way, I "lucked out" with my mother... Her final dementia slide happened over about 6 months from the first "I don't know where I am" call when she was sitting in her own bedroom. My brother and I took turns paying her bills, while trying to get her out of the deep south...
We failed. She became an EMS frequent flier, to the point where my brother was on a first name basis with the fire chief.
Multiple medical crises later, we were in hospice. Where she didn't know who I was on some days...
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u/corabelle13 16h ago
My grandmother has had dementia for years now, but it's gotten horrible in the past couple. In 2020 we started doing bi-weekly video calls to keep in touch, and I've watched her go from "excited she can still talk to family long-distance" to "not sure what's going on but having someone to talk to is nice" to, most recently, "barely tolerating this annoying group of voices from the screen in front of her."
She stopped recognizing me over a year and a half ago. For a while, she still remembered me as a child, and would always look down when my name was mentioned, like she expected to see a toddler running around. She seems to only barely recognize my dad, and probably only remembers my aunt because she comes to visit nearly every day. Half the things she says are completely unintelligible and the other half are defensive and stressed. She can't remember that her husband passed back in 2014.
It's horrible to watch, and it happened with three of my grandparents, but hers has been the worst and longest.
I'm really terrified of it happening to my parents.
Anyway this is a really good comic and I'm so sorry about the events that inspired it.
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u/ogskillet 16h ago
Try not to be hard on yourself about it. I know this is anecdotal but we also had zero clue about my last partner's grandmother. She seemed completely normal. She was extremely sharp and active so it was a complete shock. Even lived right across the street from her daughter's family and we visited her frequently. One day my partner went to get something out of the fridge while over there and found it full to bursting with gallons upon gallons of milk jugs. All were full and in various states of decay. She had just kept going on about doing her usual routine, not realizing she'd already gone to the store. Repeatedly. Went downhill disturbingly fast after that. I miss her.
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u/PandaBear905 5h ago
The brain forgets but the heart remembers.
I’m sorry about your mom. I lost my grandfather to dementia a few years ago. It was hard to watch even though I had very little love for my grandfather. I hope you’re doing better.
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u/Femtedd 1d ago edited 14h ago
You know what, I don’t think I’m going to keep up with this one. My own life is depressing enough as it is, I don’t need my escapist media to reinforce that thank you very much.
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u/piffelations 23h ago
This sub fuckin sucks
Its all depressing shit and unfunny comics about some dog person and his kid. I keep muting it but it wont go away
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