My husband's 94 year old mother who has dementia lives with us and one of the most challenging issues we have is convincing her to practice daily hygiene. She goes for days without changing her underwear and refuses to take a shower or brush her teeth.
Can anyone of you share a strategy that has worked for you in dealing with this issue? Thank you.
It isn't going to get better, only worse, so stop banging your head against a wall about reasoning with her.
She has dementia it is up to the caregivers to do what needs to be done, convince her of what needs to be done.
It could be take a shower, change clothes.
In this case replace all her underwear with the incontinence product of your choice.
You can hire a Shower Aide that will come in 2 or 3 times a week and shower her, change her, brush her teeth.
You or your husband have to do the monitoring of ADL's on a daily basis. Brush teeth, clean her after the bathroom, make sure she has clean clothes. Easiest way to do that when she goes to bed remove her soiled clothes and replace them with clean ones.
This will not get easier and as she declines more and more tasks will be added to what she can not do.
I never asked when I dealt with my Mom. Most of the time No was the answer. So I told her, time for your shower or just walked her there. I dressed her so her Depends got changed every morning if she hadn't had an accident prior.
Being female, this bothers me a lot but I feel it's not my place to insist on correcting what I see as an unhealthy and unhygienic practice.