The Story of My Mother-in-Law Who Developed Dementia - Part 1

My mother-in-law, who is in a special nursing home with a Care Level 3 certification

I have four elderly people around me: my own parents and my husband's parents, my parents-in-law.
Thankfully, none of them have any major illnesses at the moment, but in terms of care level, they are as follows:
Care Level 3... Mother-in-law (88 years old) *Residing in a special nursing home
Care Level 1... Mother (85 years old)
No care certification... Father (91 years old) and Father-in-law (85 years old)

Since both my parents' home and my husband's parents' home are about a 30-minute drive away, I help out with various things every day.
Accompanying them for shopping, driving them to the hospital, or just being someone to talk to when there's nothing else to do.

I feel many things while interacting with the elderly every day, and one of the reasons I started this note was the desire to share that kind of information.
Today, as the first installment, I will share the story of my mother-in-law.
I hope this serves as a reference for what dementia feels like.
Of course, while individual differences are significant, I would be happy if you could take this as a case study to prepare for the care of your own parents that may come one day.

To begin with, my parents-in-law did not get along

Ever since I married my husband, my parents-in-law never got along. Both of them were normally kind to me as their daughter-in-law and doted on their grandchildren, but they rarely spoke to each other even when they were together, and I thought they were a strange couple.

It didn't seem like they were fighting, but when our family visited and I kept the conversation going, the atmosphere was somewhat pleasant. However, I never saw them sitting side-by-side looking happy, and I often heard my mother-in-law complaining about my father-in-law. My father-in-law hardly did any housework.

Even when my mother-in-law started losing her hearing about 10 years ago, since they were a couple who didn't talk much to begin with, perhaps it wasn't that much of an inconvenience?
Communication became increasingly impossible.

Dementia accelerated due to hearing loss

I don't know if it's medically proven, but in my experience, I feel that my mother-in-law's cognitive function declined rapidly once her hearing worsened and it became difficult for her to communicate with those around her.

Therefore, if we had managed to get her to wear a hearing aid when her hearing started to decline and stopped the hearing loss, we might have been able to suppress the progression of her dementia.

Modern hearing aids are excellent, and some are so small that you can't tell they are being worn at a glance. Of course, the prices vary widely.
However, small hearing aids have small switches and small volume adjustment buttons, and my mother-in-law could not put them on or adjust them well by herself.

She didn't want to bother my father-in-law every time she put them on or took them off, so in the end, my mother-in-law chose not to use hearing aids, and her sons agreed.

She spent her time at home while at Care Level 1 and Care Level 2

As she became unable to do various things,the first things she couldn't do were shopping and cooking.Even when she tried to start cooking, she would forget the steps.

My mother-in-law would intend to make curry, but after cutting the vegetables, she would forget the procedure. She would leave the cut vegetables in a colander and more than a day would pass.
Seeing those discolored vegetables, even my father-in-law, who hardly did any housework, seemed to realize that he had to do it himself.

Around this time, she received a care certification and became Care Level 1.
(I plan to write an article about the application for care certification later if I have the chance.) After that, for about two years, my father-in-law was in charge of shopping, cooking, and cleaning, and from the outside, he looked exactly like a husband supporting his wife with dementia.

The next thing she couldn't do was bathing.
Her care certification became 2, and she would get bathed on the days she went to day service twice a week. A life where she didn't take baths at home continued for about a year.
Even so, it wasn't a problem as long as she could handle excretion (toilets) by herself.
What was very distressing wasnocturnal urinary leakage. It was around last summer.

This was truly difficult, and although it wasn't every day,there were times when even the futon would get wet a few times a week.When she woke up in the morning and the bedding was wet, she would apparently take off her pajamas and put them in the washing machine and press the button herself.
I learned that the smell of urine doesn't come out easily just by washing it normally in a washing machine. Information about this was hard to find even on the internet, and I struggled.

Trial and error with urinary leakage countermeasures

Nowadays,the adult diaper and paper pants section of drugstoresis something that people who don't usually visit that section would surely be surprised by.
While the baby diaper section is quite compact, the width of the adult section is incredible!

If you include the section for pads that you attach to underwear, which are the pre-stage to so-called diapers, there are a tremendous variety of products sold there. The reason there are so many types is that products are developed according to the capacity of the pads.

I remember being surprised by the sheer variety when I first stepped into that section.
Even if you don't have any business in that section right now,I recommend walking through that aisle at a drugstore once.You will surely be surprised by the prices.

Oops, it has become quite a long text, so that's all for today.
If you have time, please continue from here.