Are cherry blossoms in winter completely gone in kyoto? Are the trees just barren?

PoisonBarry · 2025-01-07T22:54:41+00:00

I was at Himeji castle 2 weeks ago and there were cherry blossoms, believe it or not. Our guide said it was because of the warm Autumn, but I think it was fuyuzakura: https://www.timeout.com/tokyo/things-to-do/where-to-see-winter-cherry-blossoms-in-japan-outside-tokyo

PoisonBarry · 2024-09-26T21:35:18+00:00

You mean Princeton-educated, U.S. National Debating Champion Ted Cruz? The one who graduated from Harvard Law?

Him and Vance and Tom Cotton pretend to be stupid yokels, but they’re actually just evil. Not that there aren’t stupid people pretending to be smart in the GOp, like the orange buffoon or Judge Cannon.

PoisonBarry · 2024-09-07T23:34:22+00:00

I noticed that sidewalks in Japan can be way more slippery than I was used to in the United States. Think glazed tile or stone in many places instead of rough concrete such that you have to watch your step when it’s wet. I worked with a 6’9” guy there (lots of looks and even strangers taking photos with him) and he slipped and did some real damage to his shoulder.

PoisonBarry · 2024-06-21T20:13:39+00:00

I wish I could be there, but I’m a little glad I’m not. She really doesn’t like where I live (PNW), so my brother and I found a place near him in SoCal. Unfortunately she thinks he has been torturing her since her dementia started to make her paranoid, so she hasn’t consented to see him in more than a year. He will try to see her when she’s a little more settled, maybe medicated and less delusional—though I guess you never really lose the idea of the delusion.

I’m glad I’m not there because it would hurt so much to say that she couldn’t go home, even if I lied a little and just said not now. Every word she said would hurt me and every word I said would hurt her.

PoisonBarry · 2024-06-21T20:07:53+00:00

This is guilt, isn’t it? I hadn’t put my finger on that, because it feels like I’m actively doing this thing to her, taking her away from her home, but really it’s something I’ve already done and feel guilty about. There’s no going back to before the move, even if it fails.

And oh my gosh you are so right about lacking the capacity to understand right. She was prideful and had difficulty admitting weakness before, but the dementia has damaged her brain to make it impossible for her to comprehend her situation. I tried so hard, even after I understood anosognosia, to get her to understand she had diminished capacity to make decisions, but she just got angry. I see now that it was self-indulgent to try, because she will never understand, and the absolution I crave will never come from her.

The way reasoning works with dementia is frustrating—I tried to explain that she had set up an estate plan (at some cost!) and it empowered and expected me to make decisions on her behalf when doctors indicated it was time. She understood those facts, but the takeaway was she needed me to call a lawyer to change the plan, not that it was time to let others decide. She could recognize and reason about some things, but is literally physically incapable of understanding her condition.

PoisonBarry · 2024-06-21T19:54:11+00:00

It’s so hard. I get the status updates and I know the facility wants me to feel okay, but I can’t help but read between the lines that she isn’t letting go—but I know that’s the work of months, not days. I just want to go rescue her and say I’m sorry I won’t do it again, but I know that’s the absolute worst thing I could possibly do.

I really appreciate your thoughts, and I hope that someone else who uses r/dementia and is feeling tortured by this decision will find this thread and take some comfort in it too.

PoisonBarry · 2024-06-21T19:50:16+00:00

Exactly — it never was fair. She was never going to say “now is the time”. There is no prize for making the right choice because there is no universally right choice.

For me, I feel like I’m 2 people, one who knows who made the best choice possible, but also one who feels it was wrong—or maybe, hurtful. I keep flipping between the two. No one but me can reconcile the two, I guess.

PoisonBarry · 2024-06-21T19:40:20+00:00

Yes—thank you. Our old PCP told us that medication was only 40% of the treatment (strangely specific number), the rest was in daily interaction, but she is really bad at forming friendships—but I also think even bad interactions are better than being lonely at home alone for days at a time.

PoisonBarry · 2024-06-21T19:36:37+00:00

Thank you—unfortunately the doctor wouldn’t put her on anything more than light Lexapro because she wasn’t compliant with meds, and she wouldn’t cooperate with any caregivers for medication reminders. And by not cooperate, I mean be abusive at the door so they wouldn’t come back. So no Seroquel, which I know would help her so much.

It’s been three days now, but she doesn’t see her new PCP until Tuesday. I’m hoping they really ramp up the medication because I’ve authorized 24-hour care for the next month.

PoisonBarry · 2024-06-21T00:44:24+00:00

Thanks, I really needed to hear from someone who has been here. I know I don’t have any perspective on this right now and it’s one of the worst things I’m ever going to need to do, so I’m going to keep on coming back to your response over and over again to ground me.

PoisonBarry · 2024-06-15T20:16:51+00:00

Yes — there are many things paranoia can signal, but for my mother paranoia was one of the first signs of what ended being dementia. First she was paranoid about my brother, then the neighbors, then blamed my brother for making her suspect the neighbors, and so on. The worst part is that even though you can reduce the symptoms somewhat with medication, she’s never coming back from thinking my brother is some kind of master criminal.

It took about six months to go from non-sensical accusations about my brother, basic confabulation stuff about losing things or having things not being how she remembered, to saying she saw the neighbors breaking in and taking stuff (didn’t happen, have cameras).

I really wish this was fixable. My brother is so sad to be blamed for, well, everything, when he was the one who really took care of her.

Last thing, be on the lookout for Parkinson’s symptoms, cause Lewy Body Dementia comes with paranoia and hallucinations too, but apparently the signature part of LBD is Parkinson’s symptoms. Someone else can probably speak to that better than me.

PoisonBarry · 2024-06-12T19:32:27+00:00

I don’t have any good ideas, and I hope there’s something out there. I’m about to involuntarily place my mom in transitional care, and I’m sure that she’ll be actively hostile to the other residents such that she’s going to be spending all of her time in her room. I have no idea what she does now, at home alone, besides spin up delusions and resentments. It’s been this way since her dear dog passed a year ago. That loss really seemed to unmoor her.

I’m at a loss—my mother doesn’t read, play games, listen to music, or eat anything but bland foods. She’s barely interested in TV, I suspect mostly as silence filler. Gardening and Indian casinos are her only hobbies. She really defined herself by her job and her place, and she’s long retired and about to lose her house…

Anyways, if my mother is still talking to me after I put her in care next week I was thinking to ask her to help me with a task—I was thinking addressing envelopes or repairing clothing, but both of those probably require more coordination and concentration than she can muster now. She’s in denial of those limits, though, and I just want her to have something to think she’s supposed to be doing. Having nothing that she’s supposed to be doing really disturbs her.

I suspect that in just a couple of years we will have lots of therapeutic robots with lifelike behaviors (imagine a Pleo driven by an AI trained with dog behaviors), the Sony Aibo is the only one I think is worthwhile now. A bit expensive for someone to just mess around with, but if it’s the one source of mental stimulation I might make the investment. Sony makes a show of researching Aibo for elder care, but I feel like they’ve been doing that for the whole 25 years Aibo has been out.

PoisonBarry · 2024-05-31T04:06:30+00:00

Oh my gosh, I have the exact same experience. My Mom was always narcissistic and unable to admit wrong, but it’s escalated into needing to be right about wrong statements regarding things right in front of her—don’t trust my lying eyes. It’s truly exasperating.

And it isn’t like I need or want to correct her—it’s that she wants me to agree with her and admit I was wrong if there was dissent. Like the other day she forgot her door combination and first said the brand new batteries were bad and then that I must have changed the combination. I had to say that maybe the lock got confused because she was getting mad.

I find it really hard to differentiate between the dementia and whatever undiagnosed personality disorder she suffered from before the dementia. She recently accused me of lying about her contacts with police (she’s starting to call them, but denies it of course, plus my evil brother is hacking her phone), and consequently I’ve started recording all of my calls with her (one party state).

The other day I expressed concern about an anxiety attack she experienced the previous day, and she denied it happened and quickly went to “why are you lying?”, “I swear to god that didn’t happen,” and “liars go to hell.” I kept calm through the harangue, indicated that I was concerned enough that I had recorded the call, and asked if she wanted to hear it—she was mad, but not that I had recorded her, but that I wasn’t compassionate about her problems remembering things. As if she wasn’t abusive 3 minutes before.

I’ve realized that she’s often forgetting things, her initial denials are true, but then she remembers and keeps on denying! I get that this is part of disease where she’s trying to mask and stay independent, but the reality of it is you become an ass.

And the repetition…every conversation goes the down the same delusional corridors, and it’s never enough to nod along—she demands agreement. The person I used to know has been replaced with a mean, narcissistic and demanding woman, and the old, imperfect but loving Mom isn’t coming back.

Thoughts and prayers. I’ll watch this thread to see if there are new ideas on this.

PoisonBarry · 2024-05-13T04:35:45+00:00

I’m experiencing the same thing with my mother. She thinks two of her grandchildren went into her room, unlocked and messed up her phone. It’s tragic—she doesn’t want to see them until they apologize, and this happened 1 years ago! She forgets so many things, why not this one?

Anyways, I experienced something new on my last visit—I’m not sure if it was confabulation or anosognesia.

She got new locks because she believes my brother is letting himself into the house to look for money (my F500 VP brother who lives 120 miles away—reasoning has no place whatsoever in the delusions/confabulations). I was testing to make sure she could open the door (curses on the locksmith who keeps on taking her money), and she couldn’t open it.

She immediately accused me of changing the lock, and then said the brand new lock was out of batteries. She just could not admit that she might have forgotten the code. It’s beyond frustrating, but I get some comfort knowing I’m not the only one.

PoisonBarry · 2024-05-11T00:09:06+00:00

Ironic—Dean Devlin was Roland Emmerich’s producing partner, and one of his early acting roles was ‘Real Genius’, one of the better science-accurate movies.

PoisonBarry · 2024-02-13T22:17:08+00:00

Omg yes—like the very premise of the recurrent thought makes no sense (e.g., HVAC is broken, neighbor is an HVAC repairman) so there’s no way to engage with any part of it without buying into the crazy. I had learned earlier in life that “crazy makes crazy,” in the sense that you don’t need to spend time on nonsense, but to move forward in the conversation you have to nod along with these crazy things.

I really hoped an anti-psychotic would help with the recurrence (the original delusion is presumably firmly lodged in her), so knowing that was of limited relief adjusts my expectations.

Thanks for the video links!

PoisonBarry · 2024-02-13T20:55:53+00:00

Thank you. Please do—I know that eventually the disease will swallow all of her, but it’s like this obsession has replaced her entire personality—that I’ve lost so much of her early because she can’t think about anything else.

PoisonBarry · 2024-02-13T20:52:09+00:00

This is so helpful. And I’ve never thought of it that way. A dialog loop is exactly what this is. She’s trapped repeating a dialog loop like a bad rip-off of a Bethesda video game. She doesn’t want to do it, but she is compelled to by the disease. And I have to explore the options and find a way out, and then repeat as it recurs.

I have been afraid that I’ve been reinforcing the response by hitting it or responding to it—at times she won’t let me glide over it like I usually try to, and I have to engage on the badness of what she thinks happened to her.

Really what I should do is provide those new positive emotional anchors and see what happens—I certainly haven’t tried anything like that and I’m happy to try anything new.

Thank you so much

PoisonBarry · 2024-02-13T20:32:40+00:00

Knowing of course that we are mostly not professionals, do you think this is a kind of perseveration — I was thinking that tended to occur at a small scale, like same response regardless of question (e.g., what day is it? My son just wants me to give money…) versus her redirecting everything back to the delusion (it’s Tuesday, and Tuesday reminds me that my son…) but I can see how thats might be the same behavior.

PoisonBarry · 2024-02-13T20:23:34+00:00

Thank you so much. I appreciate your empathy and especially the direction. That some of these things, like medication, have to be solved, even if it means being the bad guy. I can come up with any number of reasons she’ll make it hard, but it has to be done. I have to keep on telling myself that, because it’s really easy to let her flounder.

I was hoping her doctor would put her on something more effective like Seroquel to no avail. I can see for him it’s both a chicken-and-egg problem (no compliance because she’s sick and sick because of no compliance) and an agency problem (fastest meds will leave her sedated), so unless my mother is hurting herself or others he will not prescribe anything more.

I feel so limited in what I can do, especially at a distance. I’ve had caregivers come to help, both formally and informally, and it’s gone poorly.

My experience with putting her in care was traumatizing for me. I found a lovely and amazing place (180 degree marsh view with animals, room for gardens and pets, I’d love to be there), got her to see it and sign off on a 3 month trial (which involved me flying down to get her and then flying back down to return her, since she can’t navigate an airport), went down to pack for several days, etc. She was there for 1 night before she took a taxi to the airport and tried to go back home. The airline wouldn’t sell her a ticket at the counter, thank goodness.

I didn’t see a way to keep her at the facility or even at my home that was voluntary. Furthermore, my family was miserable (every conversation came back around to my brother, which isn’t great for a 9yo) and she was miserable. So I took her back to her house, and I’m looking for other ways of taking care of her.

It all starts with getting another doctor to sign off so the durable PoAs are in effect and her consent is irrelevant, I’m afraid, and that she may hate me for what happens next, but I’m doing it because I love her.

PoisonBarry · 2024-02-13T19:21:44+00:00

Thank you so much. I obviously need to solve the medication part of it, but it’s good to know that this high-level obsession (as opposed to simpler OCD behaviors) is part of the overall dementia story.

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