Are we dealing with this the right way?

[ScaryMary]

I'm feeling very confused and upset this morning and am hoping for some advice and reassurance that I am handling this the best way I can. Mom is 80 and has Alzheimers & Dementia which has gone into rapid decline over the past couple of months.
Sometimes she seems totally unaware of her surroundings, wanting to "go home" when she is at home. She has lived in her present house for 21 years. Myself and my sister (we all live on the same road) have tried to reassure her but she doesn't believe a word of anything we say. She rings us to come for her & take her home. I thought maybe she was thinking back to the house she lived in previously, but it seems not. We've tried to explain that she is at home, all her things are around her, her little dog is there etc but it's not registering with her at all. This seems to be happening mostly late afternoon, early evening, which from reading some of the older posts indicates it maybe Sundowning. If this is the case, are we dealing with it in the right way, is there something else we could do to help her? We both visit twice a day, she has home care 3 times a day. Yesterday I was there 4 times, trying to reassure her, this isn't unusual, some days I'm up & down like a yo-yo!
There's so much more but I'd be here all day! I'll maybe ask in a different post. I'm so sorry to have rambled on. I just feel so hopeless today and a bit sad that we can't do more to help her x

 

[Izzy]

I think what you are describing is sun downing. Here is the Society's fact sheet on it

http://www.alzheimers.org.uk/site/scripts/documents_info.php?documentID=159

Barry has also written very helpful information based on his own experience as a dementia sufferer. Here is his thread about it -

http://forum.alzheimers.org.uk/showthread.php?61713-Sundowners

I know it's hard as my mum did it all the time. We had to wait for the anxiety to pass.

 

[Noorza]

The advice that is normally given is if they are confused, thinking the moon is made of blue cheese, you acknowledge what she's said while not agreeing and change the subject.

So if she says she wants to go home instead of telling her she is home, as she doesn't believe that she is and will think that you are lying if you tell her the truth) say something like, "we'll go home later, for now we're staying at this lovely place, what would you like for tea?"

My mum's been burgled and they took half of my son's snooker balls but left everything else, it is her new reality, so I just say "how awful, I'll put an extra padlock on so they can't come back, shall we pop into the garden now".

I will try to dig out something on compassionate communication. Nothing is foolproof but it was the best I have found.

 

[Noorza]

http://www.alzheimers.org.uk/site/scripts/documents_info.php?documentID=130

There's another one but I can't find it at the minute.

 

[Izzy]

Is this it?

http://forum.alzheimers.org.uk/show...ionate-Communication-with-the-Memory-Impaired

 

[Noorza]

Thanks Izzy.

 

[zeeeb]

Can you just go along with her. For quite a few years there my grandmother inlaw was always "going home" and we would just agree and say that her son John would be coming to pick her up soon, next week, and take her back home.

Every time we would speak to her it would be the same conversation, "Johns coming to take me home!". "Oh, when is he coming?" "Next week!" "That'll be nice, it'll be good to get back home again, i'm sure you'll enjoy it."

John, lived quite a distance away, not locally, so it was understandable that he wasn't coming today, and next week never came.

It never caused her that much grief that "next week" never came. But there was no agro because we weren't telling her that she was wrong, or that she was never going home, and that she was living in the nursing home permanantly. It was almost like she was staying in a hospital / motel and waiting for John.

 

[Witzend]

I agree with others - go along with it plus suitable fibs. my mother went through a long stage of wanting to go home to her long dead parents. I would say yes, I'll take you tomorrow, but the traffic's terrible today -there's been a bad accident/the roads are very icy today/my car's being serviced, etc. etc. Any of these would keep her happy for the moment. There are times when you are very thankful for a non existent short term memory, since it means you can recycle the same put-offs over and over.
Plus, because I had become such a practised little white liar I would usually add that I would give them a ring when I got home and see when they'd like us to come - we wouldn't want to go all that way and find them out, would we?

 

[ceroc46]

I'm in agreement with going along with whatever she says, within reason! Although for a while she was asking how my 19 yr old daughters baby was! I put a stop to that though; might be a challenge too far!

I've learnt this with mum, I will go along with what she says or be deliberately vague and steer the conversation to something else. This seems to placate her and she's happy again. But it does sound like sun-downing.

Good luck

 

[ScaryMary]

Thank you all very much for the kind and helpful replies. I have read the suggested material and have found it very helpful. It's so hard knowing what to do for the best and we don't want to make it worse for her. I will give the 'little white lies' a go. I can use it and the distraction method in other things as well. She thinks that the people next door live upstairs and are going to steal her clothes. Just this lunchtime she bet me £5k that she had a bathroom upstairs as well as downstairs (she hasn't, it's downstairs) the list goes on. It's so hard sometimes, so thank you all once again x