Interpretation

[Brucie]

I bang on a lot about entering the world of the person with dementia if at all possible and one of the carers at Jan's home told me an interesting story this morning.

A few new residents have moved in recently and one is a relatively young man - 60-ish, I'd say.

Anyway, this carer said that she was trying to help dress him this morning and he was creating an awful fuss. Just wouldn't let them get past a certain point. He had his trousers on and they were trying to get a shirt on him.

They finally got to the bottom of it. He wasn't simply being difficult.

He was ex-Navy and they had put blue trousers on him and - horror of horrors - the shirt had a thin brown stripe! What a gaffe....

Well, maybe not so in our world, but when someone has a discipline instilled regarding dress codes, that stays longer than many other things when dementia steps in.

This brings to mind another thing that happened, last week.

There's an old lady there - 97 years old - and she was saying to staff: "I've lost my feet!"

The staff at the time were filipino and were going to great lengths to reassure her that her feet were still on the end of her legs, lifting their own feet up and pointing "see, we have them too".

What she meant was she had her slippers on, but couldn't see her shoes anywhere - it was her shoes that were 'lost'.

You have to be on your feet [excuse the wordplay] with these people!

 

[Canadian Joanne]

Yes, sometimes we are too literal. It can seem a bit like playing charades, except we talk.

What she meant was she had her slippers on, but couldn't see her shoes anywhere - it was her shoes that were 'lost'.

I think that's brilliant - she couldn't find the word for shoes but shoes go on feet. We just have to stop being so literal and stretch our minds a bit.

 

[TinaT]

The number of times I have to try to interpret what Ken is saying to me. There is always truth in what he says but somehow it gets mixed up so that it is hard to get to the bottom of it. I'm lucky in that I know him so well I can often guess at what he wants to say but of course care workers haven't this advantage, although they are now getting to know him almost as well as I do.

For example today I visited and he told me that 'that man over there saw a box with cellotape on it and stuck his hands in the box. They had to drag him off. I was mad at him and could have hit him!

Chatting to the care workers it transpired that my son took Ken back to the NH last night with a large square open topped box with a cake inside for everyone (Ruby wedding celebrations cake) and the man happened to be at the door when they arrived. He did stick his hands into the cake and was removed by care workers!!! Just goes to show!

xxTinaT

 

[Tender Face]

Nice memories conjured, thanks Bruce.

Mum so often knew what she meant but simply forgot the right word even in the 'earliest days' so games of 'Guess the missing word' or indeed - charade like conversations became a good-humoured but very necessary past-time!!!! I bet we could all write our own personal dictionary from some stage or other?

Some of my favourites were mum asking for 'green stuff' (pea soup), 'orange stuff' (spaghetti bolognese) and inevitably 'yellow stuff' (advocaat ). Recently after being discharged from hospital she announced "I need one of those things." In my first effort at narrowing down ..... 'what things?' she tutted back, 'A one o'clock, two o'clock' ... 'Oh, you want a clock?', "No" - pointing to her wrist .... "Oh you want your watch back on?". "Yes, didn't I just say that?"

Love, Karen, x

 

[JPG1]

That is a major part of the thinking contained within the book ‘Contented Dementia’ by Oliver James.

Identifying important elements of and connections between the person with dementia and the life that they led before they developed dementia.

Creating an appropriate ‘dictionary’ if you like, and then using those identified connections, which form the “dictionary or encyclopaedia” of their life, in order to avoid angst, to remove stress, and to promote a more contented life all round. (There’s more to it than that, described in the book, but a basic part is defining that kind of dictionary.)

Your example of the blue trousers with a brown-striped shirt can be paralleled in many ‘women of a certain age’ – “blue and green should never be seen unless there’s something in between” (meaning another colour) was so ingrained into the minds of dressmakers that they never would choose to wear blue and green together, so may become as distressed as your ex-Navy man. May not apply to the fashions of today – but important still for some women.

Imagine how difficult it would be for Filipino staff to understand the Cockney Rhyming Slang learned from childhood and still used today by many mature persons. The thought of terror that could spread if they heard the Butcher’s Hook, Hampstead Heath, and North and South, all in one sentence! Let alone Alan Whickers, Raspberry Tarts, and Syrup! Or Gis an Oily!

Don’t particularly like the way the book is written, in parts, but it sure is a good read and deserving of more praise than it has received. With luck, it will help a lot of people with the special early care of people newly diagnosed with dementia. Although the usefulness of it all with Filipino staff would require an enormous amount of education and training, and that’s probably a long way off.

 

[jude1950]

Hi Bruce
Back to your Navy chap. My Jim is an ex naval officer and he used to react badly to a particular nurse she was in fact the deputy matron and wore a navy blue dress for work...she realised one day when trying to help Jim get dressed that he was being awkward because she was telling him what to do, he flicked her lapel on her dress and said who do you think you are wearing this? he took exception to her because he thought he out-ranked her the Navy uniform was the trigger she changed to white dresses and he absolutely adores her now
theres always a basis for his reactions it just takes time to work it out.

Judith

 

[crazyjude]

Interesting stuff!!! I know my Dad struggles to grasp the word he is looking for and often uses words that skirt around the edges . Sometime he invents his own rhymes to attach to things.eg."Mabel under the table" , "Frank at the bank". It takes me just as long to figure out what he means as it does for him to say it so conversation are quite time consuming when they occur!
One day he told me there had been a flying monkey outside his room and i left him feeling sad that he had been hallucinating. The next day however, when i went to visit, a member of staff had indeed brought a flying monkey to amuse the residents!! sometimes you have to just take things literally!!

 

[Margarita]

Anyway, this carer said that she was trying to help dress him this morning and he was creating an awful fuss.

Just go to show that people with dementia who are
branned challenging are not really , just they can not communicate there needs . Its us who have to challenge ourself to understand them

My mother will tip her whole bag all over the bed looking for her Lips " where my Lips " pointing to her lips .

Meaning where my Lip stick .

 

[ChrisH]

It's really facsinating the way the mind works with this disease and some of the things my mum says make me smile. She's currently in hospital having fallen in the street and hit her head. She told me she'd slipped up on "that stuff you have in the summer". I got that one quite quickly: "Do you mean 'ice cream' mum?" "Yes that's right" she said.

Chris

 

[jc141265]

I originally posted this in the Younger Dementia section when a question was raised about what is meant by language loss in dementia sufferers but I think it is appropriate to post here as well, as it is my intepretation of what happened to Dad's language:

For Dad, he started off having troubles finding words...like you and I would when we just have a moment where we can't think of a word. Then he would pull out the wrong words. One of the test questions the doctors would run him through really made it obvious that something was indeed wrong with him, when the doctor would hold up a pen in front of him and ask what it was...Dad would say he knew what it was and could often describe what it did, but he wouldn't be able to come up with the word 'pen'. We used to say it was like the path between Dad's knowledge of what things were and where the word was stored in his head had been broken. So much so, that it became a regular thing for Mum to say to him when he was struggling for a word, 'Find another path Tom'. Think about how you personally search for a word in your head when you are thinking of something obscure, you find yourself 'searching' your mind, trying to find where that word is stored. For easy words this takes milliseconds, for the more obscure words sometimes it can take minutes. For Dad it was like someone was one at a time, wiping out the well worn paths to words, so that he could no longer find them. When we were saying 'find another path' though, we found it helped him if he couldn't find the exact word, he could find a replacement, like biro, or pencil, or writing stick for pen. Eventually though all the 'paths' got wiped away, tho some words possibly because the path was so well worn over a life time did stay around longer. He kept words like 'home', 'No', 'Yeah', 'Bloody, bloody, bloody!', 'you', 'go', 'good', 'badman' , 'what?','one','two','boy' & 'star' the longest. With the last four I think becoming substitutes for my mother, my sister, my brother and my names. These days he pretty much doesn't talk although occasionally he'll take you by surprise and say something that sounds like a word or name. He isn't silent however, he makes noises and does have tones, so that sometimes he sounds questioning, other times angry, or happy. But the noises aren't in a pattern so that you can work out what his new language is unfortunately.
This problem with words is something to keep in mind also as I think a lot of younger onset and fronto temporal dementias don't seem to involve the 'forgetting' symptom that you expect from an Alzheimer's diagnosis, but it is easy at first to think they are forgetting things, because they can no longer name them. Its the same with Dad and his friends and family members, I don't think he has forgotten that we are important to him, but I think he may have lost the words to describe us, including our names and words like wife, son, daughter etc.
As I said Dad lost a lot of his language first, but I think his loss of abilities has followed a similar pattern where he lost the more obscure abilities first, and yet now still some of his abilities remain, especially those that are almost more reflex than a thought about process. He can't move his hand or legs voluntarily for example, but yet he will reach up and scratch his face, or cross his legs, or walk once he is stood up as I believe he requires no conscious thought to do these things.

 

[suzanne]

language skills

I myself have become quite fluent in "swedish chef" Ma will start a sentence quite normally then trail off into hurdley wordly gurdley so have to guess the end, the rest of the family have now become reliant on me to translate, [okay when I m there!]I have also note in the night that she reverts to french[being her first language] so I think it is related to tiredness, the more tired she gets the less she is able to speak sensibly.