My mom has Alzheimer's. Probably around stage 6. To make a long story short, she wanders all the time. She is obsessed with going over to our local post office to check the mail, although I took the key away from her several months ago. I have locks on the doors and windows which I can unlock but she cannot. I'm not sure that is the right thing to do either. I also have become a prisoner in my own home. When she finds out that she cannot get outside she becomes very angry and somewhat agressive.
If she does manage to get out; sometimes I forget to set locks, sometimes she will go out an unlocked window because I don't have the ones high off the ground locked. She will get lost and not be able to find her way home but not always. We live in a very small town where everyone knows her but I'm not sure that makes it any safer. Anyone out there experiencing something similiar and what did you do about it? I've considered putting mom in a memory care unit but haven't been emotionally able to do it yet.
OPTION NUMBER 3 - MEDICATION ADJUSTMENT ! !
I feel when winter comes I've got two choices. One choice is to continue to keep her in the house only then it would be 99% of the time and then she will be even more angry. Choice two is to get her into a memory care unit. I don't really like either option but something will have to be figured out before the cold months get here. I'm afraid if she gets lost during the cold months something will happen without a doubt.
So I'm back to square one really. Still trying to figure out what to do. I know eventually I will have no choice but to put mom in a facility but it is going to be one of the most difficult things I've ever done in my life.
It is not safe to lock people inside a building and LEAVE them alone. This would probably be considered imprisonment and if a fire started and they could neither get out nor someone new to go in and help them, I would think at the very least that may be considered reckless endangerment or negligent homicide.
Make no mistake, if you are taking on the responsibility of a dementia patient single handedly and their condition is severe enough to need to be locked in, it is severe enough in my opinion that the law would consider you never want to leave them alone, locked in or not. They can get into too much trouble and if their lives are in danger by your actions, there will be terrible legal trouble ahead.
I would have to say that this was definitely the most challenging part of caring for her and I was so thankful when it mostly passed. I wish I had some better advice, but this is what helped us. All the best to you and your mom.
As a back-up in case I forget to lock something, Mom has been equipped with a TRACKING DEVICE which is fastened to her ankle. Luckily she accommodates this. When she questions it, I tell it's so we can find her if she ever gets lost and that satisfies her.
The equipment was loaned to us by the local Sheriff's Office (St. Johns County, Florida). Their victim advocate staff handles it and a woman came to our house to affix the device. She also comes when the battery needs changing and meanwhile I use their *tester* to check the battery on a daily basis. If Mom goes missing, I call the Sheriff’s Office and they have her in the computer system, along with photographs of her, and they go looking. I think the tracking range is a mile and a half. This has been a great help to my peace of mind.
No point in resisting this. If you don't feel strong in your necessary actions, your mother will sense that and keep arguing. Blessings to you in this challenge.
both of my parents and one of my aunts all HAD forms of dementia
the neighbor where I lived who WAS caring for her elderly mother
knocked her self unconscious and DROWNED IN TWO inches of got her water
My dad on the other hand had a fixation with "going home". I kept telling him daddy, we are home, which only served to frustrate him. Finally I thought to ask, what home? He look at me as if I were nuts and said Hollywood of course. He was79 then and hadn't lived at his parents home in Hollywood (long gone btw) since he was 28. We had a security door on the front of the house that we had to keep locked. He could go out the back door but the backyard with fenced and the gate was locked. I guess we were fortunate he didn't try to go out windows or over the fence. He was a big man compared to my mom and eventually had to be put in a locked facility because he became dangerously violent, although we knew it wasn't his fault. At the facility, he did try to escape by climbing fences but the enclosures were at least 8 feet high so they were always able to contain him before he got out. In anger however, he threw his glasses and his dentures over the fences into deep ivy, and they were never to be seen again.
As you can see, all dementia patients are different. If you want to keep your mom home, you WILL have to find a way to secure the home completely. In my younger days, when I was in my mid 20's and the only experience I had with memory problems was my great aunt who had "delirium" because of cancer that had metastasized to her brain, the neighbor where I lived, who is caring for her elderly mother (and I later realized I had Alzheimer's), "escaped" out an accidentally unlocked front door, crossed our residential street, tripped and hit her head on the curb, knocked her self unconscious and round into inches of gutter water. If you can't be assured of securing your mom, you will have to place her in a locked memory care facility. Anything else is too dangerous to imagine.
I'm sorry for needing to tell you a horror story, but the neighbors mom dying the way she did is still on my mind over 40 years later. I can only imagine the perpetual grief it caused my neighbor. Believe me that nobody wants to live with that.