confusion on waking up

My 90 year old mom is in mid stages of AD very high functioning and able to look after herself. In appearance, energy she looks 60 ! When she gets up in the morning and after her afternoon nap, she is very confused as to where she is and cries bitterly that she" doesn't want to live like this". It last anywhere from 30-60 minutes. Any thoughts, shared experiences or suggestions? Thanks!

Hi, there are days where your loved one actually recognizes something isn't right. My Gma when I cared for her, rest her soul, she would recognize something wasn't right and couldn't figure out why she couldn't remember things. My GMA would also say she doesn't want to live like this. I think perhaps it is a norm for dementia patients.

As funny as this sounds, I would say to her "Don't worry Grandma, Its just your forgetters working overtime. It happens to everyone, even me." She would laugh a little then say "Really?" Then say "I wonder why this happens" and I would quickly quip how it happens just because of stress, or medications, or not being relaxed enough, not sleeping enough, I would think of any excuse to make her happy again. It worked too, I would have her happy again. It was always about the same time too.

The best way to look at it I have found, is that they go back in time. The memory goes back to when they were a baby, and the body just stays in an adult body. If I were to stop imagine, what it would be like slowly losing my memory I would hate it too. So you just got to make the best of it. Come up with some stuff they would laugh at, like my forgetters working overtime. Perhaps you can try that.

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It's good that your mother is still so active. My mother wasn't active at all when I began to care for her. The first thing I did was start a walking program each morning before breakfast. In no time at all she was able to go faster than me, and she became animated, and much more healthy overall.

She had memories resurface once in awhile. They were gone sometimes within minutes. Once I went into the bathroom to check on her, and she looked up at me and said, "I'm going to go somewhere and kill myself." She'd taken her depends off and thrown them in the bathtub. Thankfully, that short return to "normal" was over by the time she was out of the bathroom.

I've always suffered from anxiety attacks, and the least twinge would cause me to become sure I was dying, and I'd have it checked out. Then one day I got a new kind of tea I hoped might help my overall anxiety. It was Tension Tamer Tea. I drink a cup a day, sometimes every other day, or when I feel anxiety creeping up on me, and find I'm so tranqul that even two conditions that I have, maybe even more of them, could prove fatal. Even knowing that doesn't really bother me.

Maybe this tea would help your mom.