My husband has Alz. and he is going thru a phase of just being totally scared of everything. sitting, getting up, going to bathroom. He seems to be hurting so badly and I don't know what to do to help him. I had to put into a home and some of the girls are great at calming him and others are awful. How can I help them?
My husband today when I arrived at his facility he was in a back room away from everybody else as his yelling and sobbing is so loud. I just sat and listened to him and he sobbed and sobbed and said we must go find Johnny. Johnny needs my help. We must go now. I said I can;t go now my legs hurt (I have periphial nueropathy) I need to sit for awhile. He started cursing and yelling hateful things at me. I just walked outside the room for a minute and then walked back. He was calm for a minute, then he started all over again. They brought dinner and I had a very hard time getting him to eat anything and even his medicines. He takes Bispirone for anxiety,Tregretol for moods citaloprian (Celexa) for depression and also Serogqul 2'xs a day. We have a dr appt. on Monday afternoon , but we still need to get thru the whole weekend. I was there today from 1:30p.m. until6:30 p.m. and he was like that the whole time. I feel so drained tonight.
That's the name of the game, 'Distract & Calm'. I spent entire days trying to distract my mom, one way or the other. I put on the TV, we tried music a couple times, we were in the room with her almost every minute, my son and I, because she literally couldn't be out of our site for even a couple minutes. In the beginning, all the suggestions above worked for me, and also the distraction of food. I fed my mom... a lot. And my mom likes to eat. If she'd start wailing and getting to a certain point and nothing else was cutting it, I'd give her a slice of watermelon, a few strawberries, some yogurt with bananas in it...whatever. Worked like a charm...for awhile anyway.... It bought me at least an hour of semi quiet... I knew this state of mind wasn't a good one, but it felt like I had to literally fight the doctor to get anything at all to calm her... I kept leaving her messages to no avail.... Finally, one of the aides called down there to the doctor's office and told them that my mom needed some kind of happy pill to calm her, thanks... And sure enough, finally, we got somewhere... Sometimes, unfortunately, nothing seems to work, and you have to get something to comfort them somehow... It's an extremely difficult thing for a care giver to watch. I mean, here's this person that you're trying to care for, sobbing away and you can't seem to help them at all, no matter what... It hurts to see someone in that state, you feel like your guts are being ripped out, and yeah, your nerves get shot real quick if it goes on too long... I felt like I had razor blades in my gut when my mom got that way. I didn't just want to help her for her sake, I wanted to help her for mine, too. Nobody wants to see and deal with someone who looks like they're clearly suffering. I hated seeing my mom like that. Get drugs if you have to, but talk to the doc...it sounds like he might need to be looked at, and prescribed something to calm him... Stay strong..
about 7 and 1/2 years ago,
that is how I knew she had ALZ
they put her on 25 mgs. of sertraline,
which also helps with the neural transmitters,
in the brain, but out 86 year old is still home.
When she was in the AL facility,
nothing seemed to calm her down,
she thought it was a doctor's office
and was always waiting to leave.
She does not experience the crying jags,
now that she is back home.
t
He needs an antidepressant or an antipsychotic or an antianxiety drug. No one should have top live in that much fear. How is he when you are with him? Can he talk at all to express his fears? How do they calm him down? Can you get the other girls to use the same method?