Challenges raise their ugly heads again

I hope by now that you're thinking I'm the most positive person some of you have never met but I've discovered that there are limits to my positivity and today has been full of challenges.  The morning began badly and got worse to the point where we were shouting at each other in one of those now rare circular arguments that enter your life the minute dementia comes calling.  I should have known better and usually I do but this morning for some reason I allowed myself to be prodded and pushed into a discussion that went nowhere other than a downward spiral and all because of the chalk board for recording dog walks.  If you remember I'd introduced it when Max, who's 11, was left aching from all the walks he was taken on each time Ash didn't know what to do with himself.  The chalkboard was to help limit the number of daily walks and Ash has resisted it every step of the way.  In fact only yesterday he stormed out of the house on his own because he wanted to go out and couldn't take the dog.  This morning I decided I'd make his life easier by getting rid of the board but, stupidly, did it without warning as I was meeting up with friends for a walk and needed to get out of the house.  When I told him he could take Max where he wanted and whenever he wanted just as he used to do all hell broke loose and the shouting began.  Apparently the new system was working perfectly, he knew what he had to do and when and I was stupid for thinking any differently, With hindsight I know exactly how I should have played it but hindsight is a wonderful thing and all I could see at the time was that I was going to have to cancel a catch up with friends for the second time in two weeks because he was in such a state that I couldn't leave him.  So I cancelled the catch up, spent the morning cleaning the house (not an activity conducive to soothing my mind) and hope the dog walking situation will resolve itself.  The thing is that I know this isn't him, I know he can't help shouting when he's unsettled and I know that logically I'm the person he's going to take his frustration out on but knowing all of that sometimes really doesn't help and when he says horrible things to me it hurts.  We're told again and again that it's possible for those living with dementia to live well with it and I think that's true but one of the biggest delusions is that the rest of us can live well with it too.  Sometimes we can but at other times, with the best will in the world, it just seems like one long struggle.

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