Hi

I don’t know whether this will help, but I can share my experience which is still very raw. 

My wife passed away from a glioblastoma a few days ago.  It was diagnosed 6 months ago and by the time it was diagnosed she had lost the ability to retain short-term memories and had also lost a lot of her long-term memories. We never told her about the tumour and she never really asked what was happening to her.  If we had told her she would have forgotten 5 minutes later anyway.

It is natural to feel frustrated and angry.  I did on many occasions.  My wife was able to recognise most of her close friends and family up until the end but she had no grip on dates and times or recent or past events.  At the start we showed her the same set of photos several times a day and each time it was like seeing them for the first time. 

I think the best advice I can give is to stop trying to make sense of what she is saying.  Just go along with it and don’t worry about whether it makes sense.  You may just need to give the same response many times but just do this very calmly if you can.  You are not trying to make her remember, you are simply trying to respond in a way that makes sense to her at the time.  Do not worry about telling her things that are not true – focus on giving her responses that you think she would want to hear.  My wife was unable to remember that someone very close to her had passed away many years ago and in the end I stopped telling her that they were no longer with us as it just upset her then she promptly forgot again.

At the start I tried to use photos to help her remember past events, holidays etc but quickly realised that it just upset my wife as she knew that she should have recognised them.  I stopped doing this very early on. You need to accept that your mum’s memory and state of confusion will not improve and is likely to gradually worsen.  This is really hard.

You will not be able to do this on your own.  You will need regular time out, even if this is just a 15-minute walk in the fresh air once a day.  If you have friends and family nearby see whether they would be willing to spend time with your mum even it is only half and hour every so often.  I found that having 2 friends chatting to each other in the same room as my wife worked well as she could engage as much or as little as she wanted to. 

You are doing an amazing job but you will probably never feel that what you are doing is good enough.

As Chrissie said, you are not alone.

Take care.

O  x