There really is no way to make people who have never cared for a dementia riddled elder understand how incredibly hard it is to care for them. I imagine it is similar to caring for a baby. If the baby was 12 times the size, spoke all the time and you were not hormonally driven to love it.
The care of an elderly person is intense at times and very boring at other times. It really fluctuates between having to do a lot to service immediate needs and then doing very little the rest of the time. When I agreed to care for him, I thought I would have plenty of time to read or watch tv and not really have to do much. I was very wrong.
Its not really any 24 year old girls dream to stay at home with their Grandfather. And everyday that goes by it is becoming more and more a nightmare that I live through.
My story isn't as simple as I graduated from college, couldn't find a job and had to move in with my Grandpa as a recourse. At the end of college, I was over being in Orange County and went home after my last summer course to pack up and GTFO. It was around 11pm when I finally finished packing my little car with 5 years worth of shit (after bribing a neighbor to move my couch to the curb and lift my old tv into the car) when I got a phone call from my parents.
Some background, my Grandpa had been sick. He was recovering in a convalescent home but would be discharged in about a week. My one aunt (J) who lives 25 minutes away and had been payed to come keep my Grandfather company had not come to visit him more than 2 times in the three weeks he had been in the hospital then the home and had been ignoring phone calls from my mom and other aunt about what to do when he was to come home. My other aunt (V) lives in a awful bumfuck town in the middle of California where she is a doctor for an also awful medical group that is all over the US giving mediocre care with a long wait. On this night where I was hauling all my things into my tiny car like the last ant moving out of her hill; V, my mother, father and brother were having dinner. If only this dinner hadn't happened.
Anyways back to the phone call. Both my parents were on speakerphone.
