This is a very difficult disease for the Caregiver. You can’t help but feel anger, frustration and helplessness. The disease takes your loved one away day by day, minute by minute. My husband of 51 years didn’t know me as his wife the last 1 1/2 years of his life. I had the same name and same 2 cats as his wife. All he wanted to do was go HOME, every day all day.
I have this POEM that I read every day and many times a day to get through the meanness, the 1000 questions and the confusion he was going through. Hope this helps you and others. I taped it to my mirror so I read every morning. 💜

I also was angery when my wife was diagnosed. She is a stay at home mother of 4 kids. Fortunately they are all grown, and out of the house. I ended up retiring about 18 monthes earlier that we had planned.

We had planned to travel the United States during retirement and doing some church volunter work. That dream was shattered after diagnosis. Support groups help me realise that there will be many "deaths" or losses while on this journey, and grieving for each. I did a little reading on the stages of Alheimer's Disease (AD) and what to expect for each loss.

It was recommended that I look at the Day Tight Compartments chapter in the book "How to Stop Worrying and Start Living" by Dale Carnegie. (It is an old book but the concepts are valuable in my life.) The basic concept is to worry about what will happen in the now and lock up worry for things yet to come. Not forget about them, but lock up the worry so each thing can be addressed as needed.

I found that once I have compartmented the worries, I am not paralized by them. I am able to address concerns for each and make a reasonable list of things that will be occuring. For example, I have been stewing over what to do when she passes which hopefully won't be for few years. Things that I will need to do include who to call, mortuary to use, burial or cremation, choice of cemetary, funeral, etc. Last week I bought cemetary plots and will work on planning funeral details, reducing the worry level in one of my compartmens.

What do I do with my worry compartmentalized? I am able to find joy in the day!

- My sweet wife has forgotten she hates spicy food. We are now enjoying Indian Food and using hot sauce in most of our meals! (She is liking hotter food that me.)
- Repeating questions were driving me up the wall. Now I tell her something that I appreciate about her every five repeated questions. It is like a drinking game without the hangeover.
- The tedium of preparing meals? Using her recipies that she has collected over the past 50 years and telling her the stories she has told me about where they come from.
- Simplify both our clothing choices. I know black gray , white, and blue are boring, but i am no longer trying to find that periwinkle top that matches her her eyes so well.

All this can be summmarized by:
- Allow yourself to grieve losses as they occur. Recognize there will be many losses on this journey and most outsiders will not know why you are sad over some of them. It is OK to be sad, angery, or bitter at small things. It is all stages of grief. (But seek help if your grief becomes overwhelming.)
- Keep your worries in daytight compartments. That way you can do the things you need to do without being buried by worry.
- Find joy in the day.
- Find joy in the person you are caring for.

Our marriage is stronger now than it has been for many years.

That is a good question. I too was very angry after my husband got his Alzheimer’s diagnosis. I am still angry a year later. I am angry because when he still had some cognitive abilities left and I asked him when he noticed problems, it was 7 years prior, having difficulty learning a new computer program at work. Then gradually, he became forgetful, not able to remedy small household maintenance issues, then unable to find the right words. Once it was profoundly evident he had some kind of dementia, our relationship of 38 years was being challenged. I am a retired nurse and took care of patients with issues but constant living with it, is not the same. While all this was evolving, we were in the process of planning our retirement. We had purchased a home in Mexico, I became a permanent resident and we slowly brought our personal belongings there. I put lots of time, money and love into this plan. Had he told me earlier that he realized his brain wasn’t working, we could have figure it out sooner and not put all the energy into Mexico. Now I have a house in México that I have to manage from afar until it sells and it’s a nightmare. So yes, I’m still angry even while knowing it’s not his fault. He lives in what I call “la-la” land while I deal with the realities of life. You are entitled to feel angry just don’t let it cloud what positive things you have in your life. I think this kind of angry is a grieving kind for what we have lost.

I don’t know if I became angry. David had ALZ for 13 years before I moved him to a safe place. I knew the way he was, wasn’t him but the cruel and hardest disease. I was having to work with the lawyer while David was still with me, getting everything in my name only which meant cashing in his IRA, bonds. The house and vehicles had to be put in my name so Medicaid could help with the nursing home. The elder lawyer was great. David was a schoolteacher until he retired. That poem really helped me as I saw David decline. He was in the ALZ unit for 2 years before he passed into heaven. It was so hard. COVID hit so I didn’t get to see David from March until August, 2020. He didn’t have COVID so 4 days before his last breath I was able to be with him. I was holding his hand for his last breath on earth and his first breath in heaven.

Yes, there is anger, if only my wife would have been diagnosed earlier. Her dementia was overshadowed by menopause, for many years, I kept asking our family Doctor if all the signs of menopause could be signs of something else, but was always assured that menopause can display itself in many different forms. During her career as a nurse she had difficulty adapting to computer skills, then during the early stages of dementia she got promoted to an administrative nursing position, which even put more strain on her. We kept blaming menopause, but if we only knew, we could of enjoyed some years in retirement, but now its to late. It seems that people with dementia cannot recognize what is happening to them, they come up with a thousand excuses why they cannot perform a task.