The hard days

Some mornings I'd wake up to screams loud enough to strip the paint off our walls. I'm surprised the doors in my home still hang on their hinges. Can you imagine being woken up from a deep sleep by such things? My heart would be in my throat.

Unpredictable rage with no visible cause, was something I had no choice but get used to. The most I could put it down to was Mum had a nightmare. Alzheimer's sure does the most brutal damage to a person, I will never forget these days in my lifetime.

I remember always feeling tired, worn and numb. Almost walking on eggshells for the rest of the day, because you didn't know how it would pan out after such starts. Days when nothing worked, no solutions nor distractions, even the hours felt like days.

The times when my brother had to get up in the early hours of the morning, to start his commute to work, only having had a few hours sleep, due to Mum taking time to settle, and being disruptive at any hour of the night. She would be walking up and down the stairs, in and out of our bedrooms. On hard days every inch of our lives had no peace.

As carers we are constantly told not to react, keep calm, walk away etc. This is not easy to do when you live in the same house hold. Holding everything in under the surface, does a different kind of damage to us, but no one will think about that. I felt we were often seen as emotionless robots, that should be the hard punching bag for Alzheimer's to let rip on. What about our mental and physical well being? not many will talk about that either. What would happen to them if something happened to us?.