My 84 year old client has Vascular Dementia. He has a couple of obsessions, but the most frequent one is that, while he was in the hospital for a stroke (happened in July, but he says "a few weeks ago"), the City came and moved his house and his neighbor's house into their current locations. This is not where he lives, he says all the time when he's in that obsessive mode. He asks me over and over about the City moving those houses, and how it's done, etc. I simply tell him what I know about homes being moved. Sometimes I will tell him about a church I saw moved. Last Friday, I took him on a walk around the house to check the foundation and make sure it looked sound. I finally took him by the arm and said "Do you feel safe here?" which stopped the spiral. Does anyone else have a recurring obsession in your loved one with Dementia?
He was in a nursing home the last 6 months of his life and he became obsessed about people stealing his things. He had no 'things' to steal, nothing of value in his room. He said people came into his room in the middle of the night and rifled through his things. It was this big conspiracy but my dad (in his mind) knew what was going on so they didn't hurt him. I praised him for being on top of things and he was ok for a while. Then he became obsessed with people who were out to get him. Out to kill him. He was afraid. He begged me to believe him and would tell me how scared he was. This went on for 2 months and really wore him down.
You did the exact right thing. You didn't contradict him but you didn't buy into either. Of course you know his house didn't move but that's his reality, to him his house has moved. You treated him with dignity by not trying to tell him that he was imagining things and you didn't insist that what he believe simply was not true.
With my dad, when he became afraid, I told him that I would take care of things. He became afraid for me, afraid someone would hurt me, so I told him that I'd take my brother with me. I didn't argue with him, I didn't try to rationally explain to him that this was all in his mind but I didn't reaffirm this obsession either. I tried to alleviate his fear in any way I could and I thanked him for telling me so that I could take care of it. Any time I told him, "Dad, I'll take care of it. Don't worry a bit." he'd feel better and less anxious.
"Do you feel safe here?" is a wonderful way to handle things in my opinion. And if he says no in the future then take it from there.
You did good.