Dementia, in addition to affecting memory, can often cause unusual behaviors. Romeo experiences this from time to time. Since he's been living in the nursing home, he has taken on a behavior not like him. I know it's dementia speaking and acting, that it's not him. Still, it's difficult.
Nearly every day in a week, Romeo will mentally "attack" me with arrows and daggers. It always happens at the top of my first visit of the day (since I live so close to the nursing home, I often split visits during the day). I never know who I will be greeted by on any given day -- my sweet Romeo, or the attacking marauder Romeo.
The sweet Romeo will smile when I first walk in his room. He'll hold out his hand for me to take, and we'll sit quietly for a few minutes. The attacking Romeo is quite different. He will stare at me with anger in his eyes, propelling the poisoned arrows and daggers launched toward me. When this happens, my heart literally sinks to my stomach, and I close my eyes for a moment and direct my breathing to my gut, where the emotional pain (his emotional pain or mine?) settles.
I sit and listen to his list of complaints. Some I can act on, most of them not. They are products of his dementia, misconceptions on his part, and logic is a language he no longer speaks or understands.
So I take his arrows and daggers, dissolve them, and get on with the day. I often feel like a golf ball hitting a steel plate at high speed:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment