So I am now living with my grandfather and watching over him full time. He has holy shit bad dementia. The interesting thing about dementia in his case is it does not seem to rob him of his self perception of being so out of it. That seems to be the cruelest part. If you are going to forget everything you could at least forget shame. At least I think he hasn't forgotten it. Maybe he has and it is just reflexes? Communication is there but not. I guess I am starting this thread to tell some of the stories because whatever reason. Anyway, tonight story is about how you try your best to keep them feeling dignity but this horrible thing just keeps stripping them of it. So we have a condo with two bathrooms. We both have our own. While moving in I developed a huge blister on my big toe and he has trouble hitting the bowl when peeing so it is good that we have separate bathrooms so he does not come in contact with my infectious materials and I do not dip my toe into his piss puddles. When I clean the bathroom I make sure to wrap things so they do not come in contact. So I had an idea he was peeing in my bathroom because he is confused. He complained about the mess of all the bandages, so I said use the clean bathroom and left them out as a reminder to deter him. I also put my shower seat in front of the toilet because it was a good place to sit and do work on my toe. It is so inconvenient to pee in my bathroom that he would go anywhere else. Or so I thought. So I come out of my bedroom and find him in there wiping down the toilet and I ask him what he is doing. He says he peed in the area pointing to the tub and the toilet, and was cleaning it up with toilet paper. Sure enough there is piss in the tub, on the floor, and in the toilet and he is sopping it up with toilet paper. Then he points out he is getting the brown spots which came from my potty emergency earlier. I splash when it comes out fast and it got under the seat. So no he is dipping the wad of piss covered toilet paper into the toilet water with his piss in it, and wiping my shit from the rim. He is trying to be helpful and good. Because of the dementia he has no idea what he is doing. I do not want to treat him like he is a child and just grab his hand and make him put it down so I try to tell him what is going on and explain to him that he needs to put the paper down. This causes him to start talking and trying to explain what he is doing, and he is a hand talker which means the feces covered hand is now waving all over the place. My mind is racins with how to not make him feel bad and still explain to him what to do. Then the demon had enough of all of that. Note, I am on my helpful medication. So the angry demon becomes mommy and grabs his hand, not hurtful, but gets the paper out and tosses it into the bowl. I Command him to go into the other room and wash his hands good and clean because he has germs all over him, and I treat him like a child for a few moments while I get control. And it works better than all the explanations and talking. He goes into the other bathroom and spends the next few minutes washing his arms and hands while I wipe down the other bathroom and get myself cleaned up. It is not the end of the world, and I am surprised at how I did not have a fit. The only reason I do not want to treat him like a child is the look in his eyes when I did. It was a look of shame. I know he cannot help what he did. Even my paranoia demon did not see it as a personal attack, which it was primed to always do. I guess my ideas of where to take control are wrong. He needs me to look out for him. I have to clean both bathrooms anyway. I just realize cross contamination of germs will happen less if we both use our own bathroom. He has no concept of any of that, and cannot remember things.
Well I can't disagree with your thread title! My father-in-law passed away about three weeks ago, and the last year or so was WILD for my mother-in-law. His Alzheimer's affected mental abilities over a two year time span would look almost like a cliff if it was a graph. When my wife and myself last saw him alive in March 2020 he couldn't read. He couldn't even write his own name. He would forget his own wife's name. He didn't recognize his daughter (my wife of course) at all. He couldn't tell time even on an old school wall clock. He would forget where the bathroom was, even when his favorite chair was ten feet away from the only bathroom in their small house. In his last few weeks he forgot how to bathe, how to dress, and how to use the bathroom so he was shitting himself quite often. One morning his wife found him on the floor in the fetal position and unresponsive. He had a medical tech that was coming over every couple of days to help bathe him, but this time a hospice nurse took over. She gave him three days to live. Sure enough he lasted three or four days, and it wasn't pretty. His body was shutting down and he only opened his eyes one time during the whole last days ordeal. All they could do was pump him full of morphine and watch him turn weird colors from his kidneys/liver/lungs/etc failing until he died. So he died at home - matter-of-fact he died about three miles from where he was born, and spent almost all of his life. That said dementia of any type is an undignified, painful, degrading and cruel way to die. It is literally "a fate worse than death" IMHO. Sure I want a little bit of a "heads-up" before I go just to get my affairs in order and prepare my family emotionally. I wouldn't want to get in a head-on collision tomorrow, in other words. If I had to make a list of things that make me say "there is no god!" the grinding torture of dementia and it's traumatizing effect on families would be in the top five that's for sure. But wait there's more! My step-father has some type of advanced dementia (maybe Alzheimers I'm not sure) and he's committed to a state hospital thousands of miles away. The very though of that is so unreal, terrifying, and tragic that full-on denial is the only way I can deal with it.
My grandfather has archie bunker personality. When he was younger, watch out he would te3ll you how everything was supposed to be. Some of that stays around, fucking wonderful. For instance, during the move we discovered he really likes the old time music variety shows and old time music performances. We put some on for him and he would clap and sing along and really liked it. Great, we can get those on a smart TV and so my parents decided to replace his TV in the move and make it so he has a bigger one that I can put that stuff on. Second part of this is he has always hated my father. My father is basically meathead, only the reality is the past 15-20 years my father has been doing all the finances and arranging for his moves. It is something my grandfather never did because my grandmother always did it. He had his things he wanted to do and everything else, like the bills, was handled by everyone else all his life. Now it's my dad's job for his father in law. So the new TV comes in and me and my dad are replacing his old TV. First archie lets out a sarcastic comment that it must be nice to have money to do all of this. Translation: you are stealing my money. This is the money he would not know how to access because there was all sorts of VA benefits my father made sure he got which he did not want to deal with. Not to mention, this new TV is the center of his universe and it is all his. I am not watching it. This is just to make the center of his universe better and more happy. He is mad because my dad is a part of doing it. Oh, and it gets much more petty and trumpy. So after that comment does not work here comes the accusation my father is stealing his TV and replacing it with a smaller on. They are both right in front of him and he is saying the new TV is smaller. We both looked at him, and then asked him if he really thought the new tv was bigger than the smaller one. To give an idea the new TV was too large for the peice of furniture the old one sat on with room to spare. My grandfather said his old TV was bigger. I told him he has the eyes of trump. What is the worst thing about that was he actually got the comment. The guy who cannot understand most of what is said to him actually understood my comment and snarled about it. So clue that there is something going on in his head that says give my father crap for making his life better. That is what is going to get to me. Those moments of lucidity where the old nasty guy comes back are remembered. The reason I felt I could be comfortable living with my grandfather like this was because I know that guy he used to be is gone. He is not who he used to be, but I see the old him still there. That is going to make things harder. That old antagonistic loud mouthed jerk is just waiting for a lucid moment. The guys who let his daughter get sexually abused by his father is still around. The guy who used to cause fights all the time because he was republican and everyone was going to know how they should be is still there. Now it is in a frail body of a very old man. It makes me wonder if the mind nukes itself sometimes. He does not want to face all the shit he has shoveled onto others who are now his lifeline so his brain just garbles it. Don't worry about me. I have some vast experience dealing with this sort of thing. I do what I do because it is who I want to be, and not to be what he wants me to be. The world is not hurting him, only his perception is doing that, I cannot change that, and I am ok with that.
the changing personality is the most tragic thing IMHO. For better or worse their personality is their identity. It's almost like the movie(s) Invasion Of The Body Snatchers where their body is the same but their mind is hijacked. But in the dementia scenario only tiny fragments of their original identity pop up now and then towards the end. That said I salute your efforts in caring for your grandfather.
LOL don't believe a word of this Dude is trying to curry favor by making people feel sorry for him after going full shit bomb in the Red Room
Funny you should mention fall resistant. Things may have come to an abrupt end today. He told my parents I was not feeding him while he was out having lunch with them. Then when they got him back to the house he recanted and said I always make sure he has food. I was a lot bothered by the accusation so I left and let my parents deal with the lying. I cook all the meals and wash his clothing. I even change the TV channel for him because he cannot work the remote. I could not believe he was saying it. He was with my parents, they knew he was lying, and I just left before I tore into him. I would have hoped it ended there. After my parents had a long talk with him about where he was going if he kept up these lies, they left. I came back and he was on the floor behind hius bed on his back. I want to think he fell. He was there thrashing around. After calming him down and cleaning him up he wanted to call his daughter. I asked him why, and he told me I attacked him and he was going to tell them that. So I called up his daughter,i my mother, and let him tell his story. She does not buy it. So he wanted me to call the hospital so he could tell the doctors what happened. My mother came down and pulled him back to their house. I cannot even rationalize in my head what the fuck is going on. He is completely lucid and able to speak. This is a man who has not completed a sentence in years because of dementia. Now all of a sudden he can speak without stuttering, confusion, or searching for words. It would be a miracle that he is talking without confusion if it wasn't for what he was doing. I don't even get it. I do not harass him about not taking a shower. The only reason I want him to change his underwear is it is going to get infected and itchi. It bugs him not to wear the same thing. His daughter was happy to have him out of her house because she has a problem with that. I put on fox news for him. No comment. No objection. It is what he wants, and he wasn't even discussing any politics with me. I really want to think he fell behind the bed. I do not know what to think about the future anymore. I am not talking about his claims. I am presented with the reality this is not some argument you can get over and change. This is not even confusion and disorientation. There are so many things I could deal with and let slide. I would like to say he was confused jabbering and mixing up what happened because it was tough getting him off the floor. But all of a sudden he is not confused. We knew something was going on at assisted living. He was claiming the housekeepers were stealing from him,. but he could never show us what was missing, and he did not have cash of valuables to steal. We had to hire someone to do his laundry, but something happened and they would not come back. Before COVID I remember running into a woman we know was his girlfriend. She seemed to be really confused about his behavior around the family. I did not discuss it with her, but she seemed to expect more from him when we ran into her at lunch a couple of times. I just stayed away because I thought it was great he was talking to someone. Today did answer one question for me. It was whether or not I could hold my temper down and not get into a shouting match with him over drama. Not that it could not happen in the future, but I was able to keep calm. I just do not know if that is good enough given the behavior that is going on now.
It's not deliberate. Dementia, senility, Alzheimer's, they present like this. His mind is not working properly. At all. The last time I visited my mom, last November, she recognized me one time out of three visits. That one time she spoke with me just like nothing was wrong. The next two times she was talking to people only she could see and I wasn't one of them. It's a cruel, heartbreaking condition and it doesn't get better. You can't internalize it or get mad about their behavior any more than you should get mad about a summer thunderstorm. It's not aimed at you as a person and it's not on purpose. Just roll with it. If you can't, your grandfather needs a different caretaker.
Look up some Teepa Snow videos, she's pretty good at explaining dementia and what it's actually all about.
he may just need a different caretaker because I cannot get him to do the things he needs to do to just survive without pain, or as painlessly as possible. The family put him in a place where he was fed and had some activities. He was independent, and seemed to be doing fine. There is a reality, we visited him on when he wanted to, and he did not want to go out a lot. He seemed reasonable, but really confused. Thanks, that does make a lot of sense with what I have read aboiut these things. I am blindsided with a lot of this, and frankly we could barely see or talk to him for two months so there could have been bigger problems. If I was permanently angry with him the thought of a home where nurses are going to end up forcing him to do things because he is confused or angry would sound happy and not hopelessly terrible. I guess tomorrow comes some hard discussions on whether or not this is possible.
A lot of discussion, and he does not like living with me or the new place. He cannot explain why, but perhaps it is because he now calls his daughter his wife and she fawns over him. She is the only person who can give him anything he does not complain about. We thought it was a silly thing he was calling her his wife. But that association seems to be pretty solid now. He does not want to admit she is his daughter. He actually argues that and does not accept us telling him differently like he does with everyone else when we have to explain who they are. He really wants to be in her house, and with her fawning over him. Oh my, I just got news that my parents want to install cameras in the house. That will stop this problem in it's tracks. I am great with that idea. I do have to wonder how that will go over with him, but that solves my problem completely. I actually wondered about that but did not think it was an option because of the cost. If he pulls this shit again it will be on camera. I lived through jail with COs looking up my ass and watching me when I pee and shit. A couple of cameras is not going to hurt me at all.
You've been there a week? Maybe there's an alzheimer's support bb you could join and ask questions. My guess is the change of surroundings is impacting him. I get cranky when I don't get my oatmeal on time at the home.
Dementia patients aren't exactly known for their love of changes. For obvious reasons, one would think.
AZ and dementia people are not happy with changes from what I have read. @Useful Idiot I think that is a large part of the problem. First there was the COVID changes that happened at assisted living which put him into a lockdown he really did not understand and altered all of his routine. Then we rush moved him because my mother thought he would die if we kept him in there any longer. That meant 2 weeks at my parents house for him. Then we moved into the new place and as I was joking about in the 9/11 thread it happens they are tearing up the walks outside of our condos. So there are days when the construction noise is just awful. I take him over to my parents house, but it is a huge interruption to any routine getting started. I am hoping the construction ends in a week because that gets him agitated. He needs to constantly watch them and go out the door to look if he is around. I am afraid all the walking around is going to cause him to fall again because his legs are not strong. Another thing I have noticed is one of the things I did not want to do looks like I might have to do. He was back in and the cameras were installed. So one problem down is that my mother, his daughter, can see what he is doing. It is actually beneficial. There has been a couple of mishaps with how to view the cameras between live and recorded, but she is keeping an eye on him. That makes her feel better, and I have also been getting feedback on what he is doing around the house because I do not hover. One thing that has been noticed is fox news agitates him. For those who know, of course it does. It does not relax him like gold or hockey. When he is watching it is when he comes down to bother me in my room. Also, I was cooking and he was trying to tell me about having to see the guy later and did not want golf back on. I realized later it was because trump was speaking tonight. He will only watch fox news, and it is an angering thing to watch. For anyone who is going to complain, I agree that all opinion news, and news in general is aggravating and excites people. Political speeches are often angering no matter what side. It is becoming clear that he wants to express himself in the way he used to, but he cannot, and he is losing what he was going to say, but not the desire to spout it. I really want to get the musical programs that make him happy up and going but that requires internet connection which has become a problem. We are trying to get a service call, but covid and bullshit has everything backed up. I just need them to replace the tap and make sure the signal is fine there. I will rig up some downloaded programs on a thumb drive at my parents house tomorrow. I am going to try to give alternatives to the news before I just stop putting it on. Another person may handle the news better, but if it is driving him nuts he does not need to see it. He will never vote anything but republican, so I am not changing any of that. He gets the NY Post anyway, so I should keep him away from things that anger him and make him fussy. If the construction ends and I can get him onto something that makes him happy rather than the news which sets him off like a spinning top, things might be somewhat nice. I know the new routine will take time to get going. I know the routine is important to people with his condition. It is not like I lead a busy life. I am cool with the slow life.
Interesting new observation. He is clearly happier with a woman serving him. So he really wants his daughter to do stuff for him. I am hearing a lot of sexist complaints. He hets mad because there is a woman on the gold channel and he thinks she is interrupting things. He even gets mad at Fox news when the women give the news. He does not want me listening to them so he calls me over to see the men talking. He has even broken form and tried to get my father to watch the men on the TV. He is showing us something that is important to him, and I am just doing the inside face palm. He really do3es not like women telling him anything. He really does not like me just serving him and going away. He wants me to have some sort of agreement with him. He wont lift his hand to wash the dishes when it is my mom doing it, but when it is me it is important for him to feel he has washed something. It would not be aggravating except for the notable sexism in it. Before anyone complains, he is deeply sexist and that is something that remains for some reason. Wouldn't it be great if you forgot how to be reflexively demeaning to women when you got dementia? Yes, I know getting angry with him is futile as he is not equipped to do anything about it. If I ever let myself get to that point I do hope none of the sexist lessons stick well enough for me to torture my caregivers. I think that very ingrained concern is probably a saving grace. I am sure he does not have it. He has got the complainer's personality. There is always a shit lining to a good thing. I have met many people with this sort of view. Don't get me wrong, there is time to complain. Some people, just look for the speck of wrong. He is one of those people. I am also not talking about OCD or some really anal people. I am talking about a person who just walks into a situation and starts complaining about things. That sort of person also never gets happy if things are fixed. I think they call that debbie downer. If something is wrong tell me, but if you are just complaining to complain, stuff it. I have to vent that anger because there is no changing him now. For anyone listening, if you constantly bitch about every little thing and do not turn it around later, you are really bringing someone down. If youy complain and things are made better acknowledge that. It really does help the person who has made an effort to make things better.
I would research what is happening to the man's brain before judging his personality too harshly. For your sake, not his. It's only going to get worse. There's going to be times you hate his guts. That's fine, and venting is good. But dementia is killing him at the source, really, and he's not having a pleasant time. Try to continue being supportive and empathic, but remember it's okay to be angry at the behavior. You're human. As for the care/gender thing, welcome to my life. I work at a facility that's 90% female, of a generation that won't let a man within five feet of them naked unless they're married and both parties have been drinking heavily. I feel like that's normal--a generational thing on both sides, really. Men are doctors, women are nurses. Period. It won't be until people born in say, 1960 onwards end up in elder care until that changes.
One of the problems is it is not OK to be angry with some of the behavior according to my mother. That is clearly an issue which is causing more problems. The cameras are there, and I am clearly not abusing him physically, but she does not like that I command him to do things when he needs to do something right away. He spills some wine and his first reaction is to try and clean it up himself. Anyone who has ever dealt with a person like this, or young child, knows that the act of cleaning up just spreads the mess and makes it worse. You cannot yell at and command a child and have that work. However, you can give him a barrage of commands to just sit down and get out of the way. It is not polite or nice, but it works. Now with the cameras she sees that sort of thing and then I get it. Hitting him is out of the question, and even physically moving him like you would lift up a toddler and put them aside is not going to work because he would fall over. He is not small. Certain things have to be told to him. I was washing his dirty underwear. He got angry and accusatory because he thought I was stealing them. so I ended up talking over him trying to explain it is in the wash and they weren't gone. When I went out to try and get them out of the dryer he went after the dinner dishes and started washing them up which ended up spilling soap into any leftovers that were around. This is the first time he has been possessed to even try to clean up dinner. I got loud and bothered getting him to sit down, and right away mom comes down and pulls him out of the house because I cannot speak to him. I try to blame it on the disease, but then things like this happen. It is clear he wants to live with my mother, and he has let that part slip because he does not know when to shut up. Whether he can follow the scheme or not, he is scheming to get back to my parents house. So when I get there and the fight is now between me and her he actually put his fingers in his ears and stuck his tongue out at me while she was not looking at him. I have to admit that got me. There is no way I can keep cool on that, and I caught myself after a few seconds and just left. I have never seen that man do something like that. She tried to blow it off as he was bothered by the loud noise, but he stopped when she turned towards him and I got louder. I am trying to put this in terms of a disease, and if it is a disease it is malevolent and conscious. I am not saying it is not, but I cannot smile and take that level of abusive behavior. I am not saying I punish him, but I have to be able to put up a defense and not walk into the trap because I am trying to be nice and not bother him. There has to be a point where it is I am washing his underwear and I am not apologizing for it. Nice gets steamrolled and spit on, so it cannot be a request or done with a smile and make him feel good. Some things are just going to make him feel bad. Yes, I do get it is horrible he thinks I am stealing his dirty underwear. To have your brain eaten to that point has got to have so many troubles I do not see. Then I wonder how long will yelling work? I thought I understood why there is a philosophy of killing yourself or the elderly before they get too old. I understand that not every elderly person is going to develop down this path. Still, I have seen it happen a lot, and now with my family, that the elderly person tears the family apart if they can.
So the experiment is a bust. After taking care of my grandfather for the past many days my mother has realized what this is really requiring. She cannot keep herself cool and nice when dealing with him. Lots of ideas have been floated, but the reality is his antagonism is ripping the family apart, and she is realizing there was something there that was always that way. He was always one of the biggest problems, and whatever made him be annoying and hurtful in the past has remained. I cannot call it the disease, because he has always been a worse version of archie bunker. Now it is just childish and stupid because he cannot bring out the long term bullshit. It is not just me. He does it to them also. I figured that would be the case. There is no reasoning with any of it anymore. He does not realize we are all comparing notes. Maybe a professional has to take over in some of these cases. My grandfather is a long time racist, sexist, bully. He used to speak proudly of beating people up who did not agree with him. He was never an educated man, but he did work hard. I wonder how some of that work went down because he never had any big friends. It was always family, and there was something that kept him on the outside with them when he was the oldest brother of an italian family. I do not know what a man who is an abusive bully turns into when he has AD, but it was always a struggle for him to be nice. So anyway, after all of this my grandmother is taking over the payments on the condo so I can live there. He is being placed into assisted living. A couple of good days of him being him and his daughter has realized there is too much with him and everyone else to have him around them antagonizing them with whatever bits of annoyance he can figure out. He did such a good job reminding her of how he was she wants to make sure he has black people taking care of him. Not because she thinks black people should serve him, but because she was raised by him and knows black people around him every day will piss him off. Mom can be a bit angry when she wants to be, and it is because of him. My other grandmother is in her glory. She has her own list of issues, but is more than happy to fix things with her money again. She is another one who has no friends because of how she has treated people over the years. I will see where the fallout is.
So the saga continues with the other living grandparent. My grandmother has cultivated OCD to deal with elderly loss of memory and dementia. It has actually worked to a certain extent for her to keep track of things and do things like remember her house keys, and not lock herself out. She always locks the door from the outside. It is a compulsion, or so we thought. The problem is two things. First, she stopped taking all of her meds because she is pissed at her doctor. She is physically doing pretty fucking good for a woman of 90 who has had multiple problems with her knees. She still walks a good mile on a clear day and does not shuffle. However, stopping medications cold turkey has fucked with her head pretty bad. On top of that last week some other old lady took out her rear bumper when she decided to park her own car in her house. My grandmother's car was parked, and no one was hurt, but all the confusion has had her mind doing twists and turns as to how she can be the center of attention, but also that was her late husband's last car and there is some serious sentimental value to it since he was a bit defined by the car he drove. So she locked herself out of her house because she grabbed her car keys which she purposefully would never allow the house key to be put on because it would mess her up somehow to not carry a separate house key around. It worked for her up until all of her marbles got mixed up from the activity and change of body chemistry. So my father is not the hold your hand and walk you through things type. I can do that sort of thing so I help her out and I put the house key on the car keys for her. We are doing everything for her and getting her car fixed. She does not drive further than two blocks herself. I try to keep her from getting nervous because her car will be gone, and she thinks she is going to starve, but I am here living in the same community and anywhere she needs to go I am there to take her. I make sure to try and work with her OCD on making a new habit, and make it so no matter what keys she grabs she always has her house keys so I put a house key on every keychain she has in the open so as long as she grabs some keys she is safe. Now here comes the fun. My grandmother complains about everything and my mother is the frequent target of her hate because my mother took her son away from her and married him. My mom has tried and has at times been the only person who has kept some of the family talking to my grandmother. On the day that I was adding the keys my mother sent me a text to do that because she was looking out for grandma. So today I am taking grandma out to shop for groceries. Here comes the payoff for reading this far. So my grandmother is trying to find her keys in her purse as we get back to her house, and she says it is all my mothers fault she is confused about her keys because my mom mixed them all up on her. My mother never touched her keys, but I did. I figure grandma is actually right. Long ago my mother had a master plan that took 46+years to come to fruition. Way back then my mother got pregnant with me, knowing one day when my granmother was suffering from the confusion of dementia I would come in and fuck with her keys. My mom is a super evil genius in my grandmother's universe. The world's smartest man from watchmen could not have created such a chain of events to get my grandmother. Now that I know all of this my life's purpose is complete.
