Use of telephone.

[roxane]

Hi,
My husband, 54 ,years old who still has no diagnosis for his neurological condition spends two morning on his own in our home while I am at work. He is fortunate to spend the other three mornings in a very good day centre.
Shortly after x mas I became aware that he made a telephone call to 118 requesting a new cheque book - the phone call must have taken some time as it cost £10. On our most resent telephone bill I have noticed another three calls on 118, all made on the same day at a total cost of £37.
Yes, I can block all 118 calls or as some friends of mine suggested lock all outgoings calls which I am very reluctant to do.
I think a little further and wonder why? and what is prompting my husband make the call, is he lonely, anxious or why ring 118?
I asked him and told him the cost - his answer was just "well you and the children spend a lot of money too" yes, a very good point, but we try to get something in exchange.
Has anyone got any suggestions - my husband has a white board with important telephone numbers on and I have made him a large print address book.
I suppose I should be grateful he doesn't dial 999.
My thoughts wonder off to him being lonely and bored as he has no explanation himself but then his short term memory is not very good.
I dont like the idea of locking the phone - we could get rid of our land line and only use mobile like so many people do but we have very poor signal.
Any suggestions greatly appreciated.
Lis

[nmintueo]

If this runs out of control - or perhaps before it runs out of control - I'd think that barring 118 calls is probably the best you can do.

It could be that he had a more or less sensible reason for all the calls - like requesting the cheque book - and simply uses 118 as the easiest way of making the call. There's probably no way to know for sure, unless there's someone around to listen in or you buy a device to record all calls (probably costing more time and money than it's worth).

A couple of threads recently that might help:

telephone
http://forum.alzheimers.org.uk/showt...4174-telephone

she is ringing 123 about 20 to 30 times per day, that is speaking clock.

Any advice please how to tackle this challenge ?
http://forum.alzheimers.org.uk/showt...this-challenge

Recently she has been waking up in the night 'doesnt feel very well '-and calling 999.

[jaymor]

My husband is also making calls on his mobile and now on the land line. He has for a while kept bringing the land line phone to me saying there is a message on it because he can see the little cassette on the screen. I have explained that this is because the phone has an answer phone and all messages left will show on the base as a number. have brought his attention to this number display when we have come in and he seemed to understand. Then we got a land line bill and there were dozens and dozens of 123 calls on there, one after another and all charged. I though he was doing this because on his very old mobile he uses, to retrieve a message he has to press 123 so he was doing this on the landline because he was looking at the little cassette icon on the screen. I could not understand why we were being charged for what I thought was an unrecognised number. How dumb was I not to know 123 was the speaking clock. Feel a litle better that he is not alone in doing this. Every time something else crops up you wonder why this now, but knowing it is part and parcel of the disease some how helps with accepting it. Jay xx

[FiveWords]

I am also having trouble with dad and phone bills; however, almost all his calls are legitimate, as he calls me and my sister on our mobiles several times a day, often for long periods. I'm guessing there is very little we can do as calls to mobiles during the day are just expensive, and if we get him to call our landlines (especially mine, as I'm rarely home) there is a good chance he will struggle to get hold of us. He isn't mentally capable of trying the landline first then trying the mobile only if there's no reply; he has one of the Doro face-based speed dialler boxes, and even that taxes him at times. When he calls us we try to call him straight back using our inclusive minutes, but we sometimes go over our minutes by doing this so can't really supplement this habit any more. His phone bills range between £90 and £130 per month, and it's creeping up all the time . I don't know what to do really; what a waste of my inheritance