stranger in the house | Dementia Support Forum

@Bill mac gosh that is hard isn’t it.
That is exactly what happened with my mum. Gradually more often of an evening she would ask my dad how long he’d lived there, and would get upset and confused when he would try to tell her they had been married nearly 50years. This was definitely initially mostly pronounced late afternoon/evening.
It is very very hard to deal with. The most important thing to keep reminding yourself is that this is not your wife talking, but the disease.
It is so difficult not to be deeply hurt by someone you love not recognise you, but you need to try to protect yourself, for your sake and for hers.
There is a great leaflet on compassionate communication which gives some brilliant advice about communicating with your loved one when they are confused. I’ll try to link it.
Some things that can help are:
- don’t disagree or correct her as she is not able to process that she is wrong, and it may distress and frighten her more. As bunpoots suggested, go along with her a bit and say perhaps you could hang and look after her her husband gets back. That may be enough to settle her for the night.
- sometimes leaving the room for a few minutes, then coming back in all cheery and positive, saying something that clearly indicates who you are can help jog her memory back to the now. For example, hello my lovely, what a lucky man I am to have you as my wife! Probably not the best example, but she may pick up on the positive vibe, be reassured, and also reminded who you are so she doesn’t need to worry. Sometimes just leaving the room and coming back has that effect.
- distraction - change the subject, go and make a cup of tea, do something normal and try to steer the conversation onto something else. This may give her chance to take some cues from you and ‘come back’.
- try just to remain positive and reassuring. If she’s like my mum, she will get frightened that you are a stranger in her house, so try to be a nice stranger, someone she can like and trust until her husband comes back. Definitely easier said than done but if you can steer her away from being frightened it will be much easier for you both.
From our experience, it was definitely worse when mum was worried or stressed, or if Dad got a bit cross or grumpy about anything, however small or insignificant it may seem. It sometimes seemed to tip her over into not recognising him.
The biggest thing to try to remember is that she is frightened, and to try to treat her with as much compassion and reassurance as you can.
The way I tried to describe it to dad was that for mum, it was as though she’d been beamed up into a space ship then returned to a parallel universe, where everything wasn’t quite as it should be and people weren’t quite who they should be but she couldn’t put her finger on it.
I’m so sorry you are going through all of this. Please make sure you get as much help and support as you can, this place is a great place to start, but there’s also the phone line. It’s so important to look after yourself.