Are two heads better than one?

It started with a busy day for me. Since my mother has dementia and my father’s back are too bad to stand and walk for long periods it falls on me to do the monthly grocery shopping. As well as paying the monthly bills among other things.

This particular morning I had to first go to work and then do the groceries, which is a mission and a half. Anyway, I got home and started to unpack the groceries and my father went and started to work out what our electric bill is.
There was a sudden silence followed by this can not be. When I went over to him I saw that our bill was exactly double the amount that we pay every month. When you do not have a lot of money, this can give you a whopper of an anxiety attack.

We sat there in our living room trying to figure out where he made a mistake in calculating our bill. I worked it out too and came to the same amount he came to.

It was horrible. We sat there nearly in tears till my mother showed up. She usually works it out for us. She was having an off day with her Dementia and still did the correct calculations. It turned out we got our math wrong.
What a relief.
Two heads better than one? Not in this case!

Having dementia does not mean that that person is suddenly stupid and incapable of doing ordinary daily tasks and other things.
As a daughter with a mother with early-onset Dementia, it is very hard to come to grip with how things will become- or more accurately how soon things will go downhill. Will she still be able to do this or that? These thoughts cloud your judgment. The fact is, as I have mentioned earlier, they aren’t suddenly incapable of doing things. Let them continue as they have been their whole lives until it is clear that they aren’t capable of doing it anymore.
There certainly will be lots of frustrating days for the person with dementia and his/her companion, family members, and friends. I certainly have a fair share of frustration as does my mother. Deal with it and move on/

PS. Grammar and punctuation suck, but that is nothing new.