My grandpa has dementia. In his world, he believes he is not invalid and is independant. He will not bathe because he believes he has done it already, he refuses help from me; for awhile he wouldn't eat my cooking because he can prepare his own food; he forgets to brush his teeth use mouthwash (his dentist bill was $812 most of them were fillings and palliative care); when I try to help him he gets mad and pushes me away. he calls me names and verbally abuses me. i am his full time weekday caregiver and it is the most challenging and difficult "job" i've ever had. i often walk around his house in trepeditation fearing that he may snap at me. he has threatened to hit me. he won't get out of the house unless he has a doctor's appointment or has church. i have to lie to him just to take him to the park to get some fresh air and to look/feed the ducks and he often asks why he needs to be there and I just say it's for physical therapy. i often to have to lie to him to get him to function and for him to get out of the house. am I a bad person for lying to a person with dementia? sometimes I question my faith and if I'm going to get punished in the afterlife for "lying". of course, I won't know until I get there. thanks for the vent.
If you are lying to Grandpa in order to cheat him out of his money, well, I think we all know that is wrong no matter if you have "faith" or not. But if your goal in lying is to get him to eat or get some fresh air, or to have him take a medicine the doctor has prescribed, surely that is not even in the same universe as a lie-to-cheat.
When you are dealing with dementia, the whole concept of "lying" has to be reconsidered. Grandpa isn't lying to you when he says he already bathed or he can cook his own meals. He is living in his his own world, where those things are true. He did not ask to live in that world. He never prayed, "Please, God, give me dementia." And being verbally abusive to his wonderful caregiver isn't something he would probably approve of if he didn't live in this strange world.
As caregivers we can serve our loved ones best, I believe, by entering into their world and speaking an emotional truth that will comfort them. Telling the literal truth of our world is often not helpful and sometimes cruel. Do you believe in a god that rewards cruelty?
As an example, my mother came to visit me for a weekend. She was having a bad day, she was very confused about where she was, she didn't remember my house at all, and she was very anxious. She asked me why Dad didn't stay when she was dropped off. I could have told her the "truth" -- that he died 15 years ago, but instead I got into her world as much as I could. She wanted assurance that she had not been abandoned and that her husband was not in any trouble. So I told her this was a boys weekend for him, and he was going to play a lot of poker with friends. She and I would have a fun girls weekend. That "lie" helped calm her down. I had to embellish on it a little as the day went on -- I couldn't call him because I didn't know his friends' phone numbers but he had my number and he would call if he needed anything.
It would have been cruel to tell Mom the "truth" that did not fit into her world just then. I am proud of telling her something that fit where she was at. And, by the way, the next day she was back in my world and she knew that she was a widow.
I doubt there are many caregivers of loved ones with dementia who would disagree with you that this is the hardest job we've ever done. It think it is hard enough in the here-and-now without worrying about the afterlife. Do your best, in love.
How old are you? I'm wondering how my 22 year old daughter is going to handle her father's decline.
I vented to my "God" or higher power or whatever one wants to call it, why I'm faced with so many challenges in my life - divorce, being a single parent, being a caregiver to a difficult and challenging grandpa; dysfunctional unsupportive critical family members; etc. I guess it is a test for my soul.
It took me some time to convince my father that he didn't have to correct my Grandma all the time. When I told him about therapeutic lying, I think it actually helped him understand things better and now he goes along with things more when it comes to talking to her about things.