This is the first New Year's Eve and New Year's since my mother was officially diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

So, what should we do?

Every year, my sister's family and my family gather at my mother's house on New Year's Eve and eat the food (mostly hotpot) that my mother has prepared, but

last year, my family, my son, me, my husband,

were wiped out by the flu. .

→My mother came to help out.

When I think about how much my dementia has progressed in a year,

I think that the coronavirus countermeasures are really accelerating the progression of dementia. . .

Anyway,

I talked it over with my sister,

and she said,

"I'm pregnant and we don't have a car, so it's hard, so I'll prepare the ingredients for hotpot and bring them over. Let's get together at my parents' house on New Year's Eve."

So I'm going to take her up on that.

By this time,

my morning sickness symptoms had gotten better, but...

As always (both when I had my first son and now, and even now when I'm pregnant with my second son),

when I'm pregnant, I want to lie down whenever I can,

if I don't, my body doesn't have enough energy to keep going

(probably because the baby in my belly is taking all my energy)

Then, on the evening of New Year's Eve, I went to my parents' house for the first time in a long time.

The moment I entered my parents' house,

there was a terrible smell.

What...? Is something rotten?

What's that smell? ? ?

Just as I was thinking that,

my exhausted sister came out of the kitchen.

It seemed like she had been there for quite some time,

and she had been tidying up the place really hard.

Sister: "Does it still smell? I've already cleaned up quite a bit, but...throw away everything that seems to be causing the smell..."

Then, when I looked at the house,

it was covered in dust and there was no sign of cleaning.

This was a huge shock.

As I wrote in my blog in 2014,

my mother has always been a very neat person.

The house was always tidy.

(Actually, my sister and I make a lot of messes, so...)

And to think that she didn't even notice this smell...

I found out later that,

with dementia, your nose doesn't work...

It's not that your nose doesn't work, it's like your brain doesn't recognize the smell...

The other day, I was surprised to see her admiring a completely withered flower and saying it was beautiful...

My sister: "I told her I was going to buy all the ingredients for New Year's Eve, but it seems she's already done the shopping."

And it seems like she did the shopping a long time ago...

There's expired, discolored meat and other things coming out of the fridge,

and the vegetables are suspicious.

All the dishes are sticky,

and broken everywhere,

and there's just not enough.

There were broken dishes lying around as well...

The cutlery was gone,

and instead there were a ton of disposable (used) chopsticks...

What is this...

They used to be so particular about their tableware and lived such a wonderful life (tears)

Royal Copenhagen, Narumi, Baccarat glass, Meissen glass, etc... Where did they go?

←I later found out that they'd given them away, broken them, or thrown them away...

That being said,

I was too tired to move, so I just lay around.

My sister helped out a lot,

and somehow we managed to get dinner together.

My grandchildren (my son and niece) were excited to see each other for the first time in a while.

My mother was also happy to play with her grandchildren,

but then her eyes started to glaze over,

and she suddenly fell asleep right there.

???

After dinner was done, she was playing with her grandchildren,

and suddenly she fell asleep??

What a shock.

I found this out later too.

People with dementia are apparently very sensitive to anything "different from normal,"

and although I was happy that all my grandchildren were there that day,

I think the fatigue from this unusual experience suddenly reached its peak...

After that, our family ate as much as we could,

and left the cleaning up to my sister ← hey, hey, well, I was spoiled by her since she was pregnant.

We got home...

It was quite a shocking experience.

I bought a dress that I can still wear at 36 weeks pregnant,

and that I can use to breastfeed after giving birth.