by Outlandish1358 » Sun Oct 03, 2010 12:20 am
My Grandparents are my caregivers: I am 14 at the moment and there are many fees that need to be paid, and places that I need to be driven. My Grandma is not well-educated and cannot drive, so she acts as the housewife figure and takes up the stereotypical women's role. My Granddad is in charge of keeping a roof over our head and he has Alzheimer's. It's not serious yet, but we can see it becoming increasingly so. I sometimes have family therapy sessions, but they are not working because all arguments begin with my Granddad's forgetfulness. He forgets that he bought something expensive, and blames my Grandma for wasting money; he forgets where he put something, and blames my Grandma for losing it; he forgets the words for things, and he has many enemies from social isolation; he forgets how to fix something, and blames us for interfering; he forgets his line of conversation, and so rambles on with the same racist 'speech' that nobody respects, and is suspicious of everybody around him. All day we get yelled at and only sometimes does he admit to his poor memory. Our family never stops arguing and I'm tired. I don't know what I should do as this gets worse and I don't know how we will survive when he forgets how to do the things that nobody else in the household knows how to do. He's stubborn, so he will always be our problem: there's no confession. I don't know what the future holds and how we are going to deal.