My mum suffers from dementia and taking care of her is a test of our patience, tolerance, vigilance, flexibility and adaptability.

She asks the same questions over and over again or talks about the same topic repeatedly in the same hour or on the same day. She also talks about people who have already passed away as if they are still alive.

She can go to the toilet for more than 10 times during the day. At night, she can wake up to go to the toilet five times in one hour. She refuses to wear the adult diaper and threatens to throw them away when we try persuading her to do so. On those rare times when she agreed to wear the adult diaper at night, she still got up the same number of times because she is not used to wearing them.

Being a perfectionist all her life, she cannot tolerate untidiness and dirt. When she is washing her hands, she will be cleaning some spot in the sink. When she is taking her bath, she will be washing the bathroom tiles instead. She will tie up any plastic bag that is left open regardless of the contents.

She is ambulant, so we need to be vigilant and watch her like a hawk. Once I was engrossed in doing my work and before I knew it, she was climbing the stairs to go to the second storey. She makes many trips to the second storey to “arrange” her clothes, to look at her things, etc and she gets upset if we dissuade her from doing so.

On some days she would insist on going to the bathroom by herself or bathing herself although she is incapable of performing these activities of daily living. Once she threatened to throw herself from the second storey when I tried persuading her to let me help her.

She may agree to go out for a meal and when it is time to change her clothes for the outing, she will change her mind about going out. What works with her today may not work the next day, so we need to be flexible and just go with the flow.

It hurts us to see our smart, capable and independent mum in her present condition. What hurts us most is that she does not know us anymore. We remind her every day of who we are and our names but she will reply that she is not so lucky to have all of us as her daughters.

There isn’t much that can be done for my mother in her current condition.  However, what we can do is to try our best to make her as comfortable as possible.