The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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My grandmother had Alzheimer’s and my grandfather spent the final six years of his life taking care of her. We hired help, but he wanted to be there for her. It ruined him. He practically starved himself to death, lost the will to live even though he had previously been a remarkably healthy man in his early 90s. He watched his wife grow to hate him, shout, yell, turn into a horrible person (through no fault of her own, she had been a very loving and caring wife, mother and grandmother before her condition set in) and it destroyed him. He had been set on living to 100, had planned a long retirement of reading and walking, traveling, playing poker which was his great joy and so on. He was independent until a few months before he died. Everyone in my family (including the doctors) believes wholeheartedly that if my grandmother had been hit by a bus a few months after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s he would have made it to three figures, might even still be around today. His mother lived to 103 and his father to 94, so he had the genes for it.
I think in your case it will depend on what your father in law wants to do. If he is truly committed and sees it as part of his marriage vows, it will be hard to shake him out of it, and you will bear witness to a tragedy (albeit hopefully much less bad in your case). If he would in any way accept someone else (perhaps a sister or brother in law, maybe your children or nieces/nephews if you have any) looking after her for a while, then I would take him as soon as possible. I know my dad wishes he had spent more time traveling with his father.
Oh, that is so sad. Alzheimers is an absolute nightmare.
We are currently planning to send her to my sister-in-law, which we have done in the past when my father-in-law goes to Spain (he tries to go once a year). For the first time though, she is putting up a fuss about going and I can't get a clear answer why.
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