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Yup Jessie Belle sure is an issue and Iknow I have been guilty of it too. My Mum was never nice to me not once HOWEVER she wasnt AS bad as she can be now. Geriatrician (oh I love this man) said she has no control to stop herself from saying what she thinks - she no longer understands the concept of hurt.

Awww I have been saying till I realised that means for the last 55 years (ie before the dementia) she did bloody know how much she was hurting me - what a cow!
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That brings up a good screaming point with me -- when someone tries to tell me about my own mother, who they barely know. I've known her 63 years and have been caring for her the last 5 years, 4 months, and 19 days. Not that I'm counting.
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Globetrotter, when dementia is overlaid on a difficult personality, you usually get the same personality worsened by the dementia. I think your wondering if it's the Alzheimer's or her inherent personality is well founded. We often hear that it is the disease and not the person. When I hear that I think "Nope, it's the person." We know how our parent was before dementia set in. With my mother, I consider anything new as being caused by the dementia or her medication. But the difficult personality is old news with her. :-)
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frustrated, have you tried the nicotine lozenges that help take the edge off when someone is quitting? It may help with the anger she is feeling when she is wanting a cigarette.
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I am currently taking care of my mom and I have only been doing so for about a month. She is on hospice and they are very wonderful. She is very good when they are here but when they are not here it is another story. My mom suffers from final stage copd. She still smokes. She has 2 go to my back porch 2 smoke. There is no smoking in my home. Sometimes she is breathing well enough to smoke on the 1 cig every hour n half schedule I have her on but other times not. She wants one every few mins n i wont let her. She gets mad st me n says hurtful things then when she sees that wont make me give her one she cries. I still dont give in but it makes me feel so bad. If her lungs could handle it i would give it to her. Her every waking moment has 2 be spent with me. I have no time to myself. If i go out of the room she folliws me saying she is lonely. And oh yea if she is having a cig fit and i walk out the room to let her argue alone she follows me with the ranting.
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Mom gets very upset when I go out because she gets lonely, afraid, disoriented and loses track of time. Her short term memory is shot, so if I phone her while I'm out, she can't remember. when I write a note saying where I'm going and when I'll be back, she folds it up and puts it away somewhere or throws it out, then when I come home it's "You've been gone since 9:00 this morning and didn't tell me where you were going. I convinced her to try a respite relief worker but she complained that they came too often. She became quite belligerent and antogonistic so I had to cancel it. When I come back or every time I go out she'll say how the time just drags and she's scared to be by herself now, afraid something will happen to me. I just purchased some plants and transplanted them this evening in larger pots on the balcony. I became dark and I had made a mess, but started to clean it up. Mom had started yelling and saying ridiculous things like we the landlord might evict us, etc., how foolish I was to start so late, etc. I finished up as best I could then told her I was going to the Second Cup. She can be so manipulative and emotionally/verbally abusive, and I'm not really sure if it's the Azheimer's or if part of it is her inherent personality.
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See, that's the problem with my mom right now, Jude - her sats are are running 94-96 with her oxygen at 3 liters and if she is sitting still. Any movement or exertion (like walking 20-25' to the bathroom) and she drops into the 80s, which is unacceptable. At that point, she's gasping for breath. Hoping we have more answers this week as more tests are run.
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Oh h*ll SATS - oxygen levels I forgot those - and pulse but they do those automatically hence me forgetting them

Mums usual pulse rate is 70 but it can vary slightly, her usual SATS are at 96/97% which is really good for her age
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I have a protocol tick sheet and if they dont follow it then I step in and request it from them and they hate me for it.
Have you dip tested her urine? Were the proteins and leucocytes normal were the sodium levels normal
Have you sent it off for analysis?
Bp? (make sure YOU know what normal is for said person)
Bloods? (Ask what tests they have done)
CT scan of the head?
Electroencephelogram EEG?
Mental status tests?
Neuropsychological tests?

It doesnt really matter whether you KNOW what the results should be just that you are checking every angle.

By the way these are the ones MY MUM needs tohave checked if your loved one has other issues then there will be a whole new set of tests that WILL differ from this set

At least the docs KNOW I am on their case and that I take a serious interest and if they dont tell me in lay terms then I ask them to explain so I can understand. Yep Im a pain in the butt but h*ll I have rights too
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Susan, I know where you are coming from with these doctors that just won't get it!! With me it is the doctor not understanding there are UTI's and that delirium can quickly occur if no antibiotic is prescribed. At one point it sounded like the doctor repeated the Wikipedia definition of the bacteria involved and not the one he should have learned in medical school! Scary and I am exasperated with them.
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Jude, that is another one of those crazy caregiver experiences that no one can fully understand but all of us!!
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Oh my gosh, Jude!! That's one for the books.
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Isuppose now is the right time to tell you of a funny story relating to the commode. As you are ALL aware the pot sits in the commode under the toilet seat - no idea why I explained that but hey ho! Mum lifted the toilet seat and sat her ample behind (for all she is frail her butt never seems to get smaller) full square on the commode. I was asleep didnt know it had happend until she started ringing the bell. She had somehow managed to create a vacuum between her and the pot and try as I might I couldn't see any easy way to release the pressure. I tried pressing on her skin asking her to lean forward and back nothing... In the end I said look Mum you ARE gonna have to stand and this is gonna get messy but I dont see another way round it. So I got an old washing up bowl that we use out in the garden and put an old non slip mat inside it and got her to start to stand. Well it didnt release immediately so I am stood there pressing her bottom in every part imaginable then all of a sudden whoosh pee and poo all over the bowl, carpet me her but at least she was free. It was bloody annoying at the time but now I look back on it incredibly funny
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My screaming point was when Mom sat on the potty 1:30 one morning and then refused to get off and go back to bed. She stayed on it for 1 hr. and I tried everything, even resorting to living in her world.....'I need to go potty. You have to get up so I can go. I'm going to tell your momma you wouldn't let me use the potty'....she told me to go outside!
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Cerise, you brought up an excellent point - a screaming point, that is.

Mom's recent fall was caused by her blacking out and falling out of her chair. Her doctor, who is Mom's age (and I think it's time he get out of the game), insists on putting on all her records that she "fell asleep and fell out of chair". (Which has led to me having to tell the story of her fall and how it happened over and over and over again to other docs, the home care nurse, the social worker, etc - because "fell asleep and fell out of chair" is on all the referrals!) I have told him repeatedly that he was NOT the one that was sitting 8 feet away and saw her fall, and the manner in which she fell. She was NOT asleep, she was unconscious, possibly not even breathing at that point. The only way I can describe her when she fell is "lifeless". The fall and slamming her head against the entertainment center jolted her back into consciousness. He refused to run more tests until I brought her back to his office, and she presented with shortness of breath and extreme fatigue, with O2 sat level in the low 80s. THEN he was willing to run an MRI and chest xray - but only then. Oh no, don't listen to the loved one who was there when the accident happened, just go off your own opinion and refuse to even consider that anything else could have happened. Idiot.

We are seeking a new doc this next week - a geriatric specialist.
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I must practice my screaming. Have a garage not being used to it's full potential.
Let out a banshee wail in the garden recently which scared the heck out of my poor husband. Fortunately we get foxes so maybe the neighbours though it was them.
I am very lucky that my Mum is sweet natured but she does many of the things I've learned from this site are common with dementia sufferers. Packing to go home, the tissue folding/hoarding thing, etc.
What makes me go from calm to livid in a flash is incompetance, our health centre is high on my list. They have forgotten to do the tests which they took blood for, lost samples and turned up for a home appointment no-one told us about, which upset Mum. I know mistakes happen but it's the couldn't care less attitude. Just off to the garage, they say practice makes perfect.
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Pam I empathis not with a daughter for I cannot imagine how hard that must have been but with my father who I watched die from cancer. I couldnt agree more screaming is definitely fine. Numbness means you know the end is near and cant do a damned thing to alter that
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my screaming point? O god, this 24/7 working hours. Its been 19 days. But no more scream, when i have me time, i just sit and breathing, thinkingnnothing and do nothing
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I went from screaming to numb as my daughter was dying from Leukemia. As long as you can still scream, I think you are doing OK. Numb is worse. After that came a racing heart and gasping for air, lying on the floor until the room stopped spinning. Keep on screaming.
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Mom is on the "will you turn me over please" thing again, and yes I have already turned her 3 times and spoken to her a dozen in the last 45 minutes. I don't know why it gets to me so much, it just does. I have come up with several coping strategies though, so my melt down the other day is not a frequent occurrence. Soon we can get our jammies on and have an ensure and take our night-time meds and she will be out for the night. And I don't need to go outside to scream (shutup shutup SHUTTHEFUP) as she is deaf as a post without her hearing aids and I know she doesn't hear me, but the neighbours probably think I am a horrible (b)witch!
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Yes our respective government offices are so helpful. We have it all linked up I am told yet I still have to sent triplicate stuff off to about 5 different depts of the same place grrrrrrrrrr
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Screaming point was going to see Mom 3-4 times a week and still catching you-know-what for not coming frequently enough. Going and catching nothing but you-know-what the whole visit.
Screaming point 2 is filling out government forms. I'm on disability and every time I turn around there are more forms and every one of them wants something a different combination of copies of information. Getting 3 at once is enough to drive anyone over the edge. Getting denied for transportation to an out of county doctor because your actual miles differed with TMA's mapquest number by a mile or two is another screaming point. And apparently short jaunts off the given path for bathroom stops aren't allowed.
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Yep the plumber is coming Monday so I will be stinky by then but yes its the pressure valve ......apparently we had a pressure surge - and youre spot on its almost as though someone up there thinks aaaaah shes had it easy today now what can I do to make things a littlle more fun to watch!
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Bummer! Of course the wretched water would have to wait for the second you'd got the shampoo on. Are you okay getting it sorted? Do you know what happened?
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I dont know why I didnt write this first Mum wanted a shower at lunch time got her upstairs - not sure how, got her into the shower, got her hair covered in shampoo and pfft the shower stopped working - oh serious problem warm towels got wet as I rinsed her hair with warm water - the palarver really was a pain in the proverbial and now she says she wont get into the shower again in case it breaks again - well thats true in the immediacy no water no shower - at least it didnt suddenly go ice cold!
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LOL @ SUsan and CM - I can't have that problem I change mums pants - they are disposable so the whole lot goes straight into the bin next to the commode...however it did take me an hour to get the disposable pinny unwrapped from the washing machine drun thingy bit - how it jumped inside I have no idea but it obviously did something horrible because we now have a new washing machine
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Susan I only did that once (once was enough) but the worst thing about it was having nobody to blame but myself - no matter how hard I tried to work out how it was her fault.
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Oh Jude! - you can't win, can you. My mother would blow her nose, dab her mouth and then *wipe her eyes* in THAT order! Never mind scream moment, I was apoplectic over it. Love us and save us...
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Tissues in the dryer have nothing on soiled incontinence pads left in the clothing and washed/dried. They explode, leaving little urine-soaked jelly "bits" all over the clothes, the washer, everywhere. And they DON'T come out easily. Did that twice before I started remembering to check every single article of clothing before washing.

Now it's not really an issue anymore, because Mom is doing very little changing of her own clothes these days.
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kathy11, Will certainly be praying for you. The anger is only going to hurt you, not the siblings. My frustration was actually with my folks until I understood they could not help most of their behavior, themselves. They were upset they were losing memory and such. In Denial, of course, and so their frustration was directed at the 'kids'. When I realized how frustrated they were and that I did not help any by being frustrated, also. I could then agree if it did not matter, redirect if it does, be firm when necessary and in all LOVE THEM, because I do!
Some things are simple, not necessarily easy!! ( Some things are neither) Bless You!
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