A few days ago I noticed a link to Dementianet - it had appeared among the Google-sponsored ads to the right hand side of this weblog. A brief investigation revealed it is run by Lundbeck, a pharmaceutical company. It is an interesting link, leading to all sorts of other pages I simply haven't yet had the time to investigate fully. However, after having a brief look around, I thought I'd add my story (with plug) to those already there. This is what I wrote:

Earlier this year our geriatrician diagnosed dad with Alzheimer's disease. Mum had been diagnosed with the same thing for about three years at that stage. They are both in their mid-eighties. Life with two parents with Alzheimer's has its particular challenges, but also elements of high comedy. While it can be maddeningly frustrating at times, it can also be quite hilarious, and I think it is essential to find time to laugh when you can. Funny or sad, I try to keep the rest of the family, scattered around the world, up to date with mum and dad's daily progress through my online journal at blog.fadingfrommemory.info

The primary problem of having two Alzheimer's sufferers under one roof is that it is often impossible to make things right for both of them. For example, my dad loves to have visitors so that he can rerun all his old stories, probably get someone to make some food for him, and get help with whatever his current preoccupation is. Mum, on the other hand, is easily overwhelmed if too many people are around, and can sometimes be reduced to tears, or even anger, under these circumstances. Dad has become more talkative as he's grown older. Mum has developed a form of dysphasia that makes her almost incomprehensible. This is a formula for disaster, since dad will constantly ask mum questions which she cannot answer properly. Dad then tells her he doesn't understand, rather unsympathetically, or probes deeper. The more he asks, the more mum gets frustrated at not being able to make herself understood. The result can sometimes be that mum will try to slap dad and tell him to 'shut up! shut up!'

Essentially, mum would be happier if she had different company. Dad would not. We cannot solve this dilemma.

The other problem is that when things go wrong, and this is often, of course, we don't know who has been involved. Just for example, the mail sometimes disappears. Sometimes it is dad who has tried to deal with it, got lost midway through the process, and absent-mindedly stuffed the paper into a drawer in his bedroom. Just as likely, mum fished the mail out of the letter box and walked around with it, taunting dad that she wasn't going to let him read it, because it was 'hers', and later hoarded it in her bedroom. Then again, mum sometimes tears it up without opening it. Try to find out what happened (so that you can attempt a solution to prevent it happening again) and you'll never get to the bottom of it.

My brother and sister and I look after mum and dad on a drop-in basis. We make at least two visits a week, sometimes four or five. We're fairly relaxed and have let standards of cleanliness and hygiene slip simply because to keep to the old standards would require far too much discipline and control, and as long as mum and dad are reasonably happy, despite the dirt and smells, we let them be.

Despite the huge volume of advice and warnings about dealing with Alzheimer's, we've found we need to come up with our own solutions much of the time; standard advice such as providing music, putting signs on things, etc, usually has unexpected and negative side effects. We've had to keep experimenting.
Our approach is to take each problem, such as not washing, or eating badly, one by one. We try a fix, if that doesn't work, we try another. Eventually, sometimes, we have to give up. We all know that in the long run nothing will help, nothing will work any more, and mum and dad will descend into complete oblivion - at roughly the same time we hope. But until that time we can bring our ingenuity to their problems and try to keep them in their own home, with their two cats, and surrounded by all their familiar old furniture and belongings.