Hi there! Been reading various stories on here with a lot of interest lately and thought I'd sign up. So we are convinced that my father (73) has been slowly developing some form of dementia over the last few years, although it seemed to be mostly very sporadic moments of unusual behaviour and repetitive questioning until the last six months when things have gotten substantially worse.
Health Issues
What's making this more difficult is the fact he has various issues that he has neglected to see a Doctor about (which have only gotten worse) and he's also drinking very heavily now; many days he is drinking either a bottle of whisky or a large chunk of one and then a bottle wine (two if there's not much whisky). He's always enjoyed a drink, but always in moderation, and now suddenly in the last few months he's been drinking excessively. The other issues include some sort of ongoing long-term urinary issues (UTI likely, there's been some incontinence, very frequent bathroom trips that have to be taken suddenly) and arthritis and other significant joint/limb pains predominantly in the legs that my mum (former nurse) thinks may be gout, which the alcohol would be largely responsible for. He's very old-fashioned and does not like going to doctors; thinks the pain in his body can be relieved with alcohol, when it clearly can't. He is also on medication for high blood pressure, which I'm fairly certain shouldn't be surrounded by bouts of heavy drinking as they could lower it further.
Personality Changes
His personality has changed so much in this time. While he is usually more like his usual self in the mornings, he gets progressively worse as the day goes on, even moreso if he's been drinking. He's pretty miserable most of the time, rarely talks, is quick to get into a mood, lost all interest in things he used to do, often sits in the living room doing absolutely nothing for an hour or two, barring taking a drink from his glass. And yet when my niece comes over after school, he makes at least more of an effort, and when my sister comes in to collect her, he has to make even more of an effort with the "host mode". Exactly the same if we meet up with his sister at somewhere local when she travels down; it's like he's (somewhat) his old self in those couple of hours before we come home and the new personality resumes. It got to a point where we even found bottles of alcohol (from a neighbour's house that he has looked after), in his drinks cabinet; bringing her (presumably out of date, judging by the BBE 2018 Baileys....) old bottles here and consuming them; drinks that he wouldn't normally buy like Schnapps, Cointreau and the Baileys.
Dementia Symptoms
In terms of the Dementia symptoms, aside from the repetitive questioning (will often ask my niece something a few times in the space of half an hour, for example):
▪ Forgetfulness in general and poor short-term memory
▪ Increasingly poor judgement; I've had to save him getting scammed out of considerable amounts of money three times recently. He was literally going to get the driveway expensively renovated just because a car from a dodgy company parked up and had a chat with him about getting it done... No previous inclination about wanting such work done. And it happened again a few weeks later!...
▪ The sundowning/host-mode that I've mentioned. It's like Jekyll/Hyde..
▪ A fixation with closing blinds/curtains early. We noticed this during the Summer when they'd be closed when there was still an hour or two of daylight left, his reasoning being that he didn't like people looking in, even though it would be very difficult to see in from outside, so some elements of paranoia. It was quite common to see him sitting in the living room in these quite dark conditions, doing essentially nothing at all, other than sitting there.
▪ Obsessions, particularly with buying things. There's a garage fridge with lots of orange juice, much of which has long past its best, and it's still occasionally topped up with more. This applies to a lot of food/drink tbh. But aside from that, he's been buying his granddaughter a LOT of clothes, frequently several hundred pounds worth. Given she's at an age where she's still growing, it's unlikely she'll even get much use out of them, particularly with being at school during the week. He even said "that was it" to her the other week when she was going through the latest collection (referring to them being part of her Christmas presents) and yet he's made more orders since then. Done the same thing with backpacks for school, even though she already has one she loves, and won't get to use them. It's like he sees a reduced sticker or a special promotion on and is compelled to buy something. I had to negotiate with Sky on his behalf to ensure he'd keep his TV/internet package as "it was costing too much" and he's forever complained about the various monthly bills/costs and yet now he's blowing so much more money on the drinking, the gifts, wasted food/drink etc.
▪ Depression/moods. He's always had moods, but they dominate most of his days now, certainly at home.
▪ He's fixated on money. When he's been drinking heavily, he will often go on about how he paid for things, paid the mortgage or whatever. But he opened a savings account for his granddaughter and makes a habit of telling her (extensively) when he's put money in, which seems a little inappropriate. Constantly bringing up how much something cost, or "joking" that he needs payment for something he's bought, drives us nuts. He's signed up to numerous charities, it's almost like he's determined to prove he's a good person that is helping others, to his own detriment. Ironically when things like a light bulb go out now or something breaks, he does nothing about it, so it's up to us to sort it out.
▪ Occasionally finding doors unlocked if he's gone out, or in the case of the other day, he locked the back door, even though he knew I was outside tidying up the garden/garage. On some of the occasions he's left the door open, he's actually "locked" the door, but not into the actual frame, so it was basically slightly ajar. It's still infrequent at this stage thankfully, but the fact it's happening is alarming.
▪ Loss of appetite/noticeable weight loss. Sometimes he doesn't have any lunch or tea, other times it's just a microwave burger or some soup, perhaps a sandwich. Only seems to deal with very basic meals now. In fact, his tea tonight was two corn cobs. Literally just that. He put out some dessert to eat after, but decided to have a banana and forgot about the dessert he'd left out...
▪ Poor personal hygiene; not sure he's even having baths now; is instead standing up in the bathroom at the sink and cleaning himself that way, often leaving a lot of wet patches on the floor. Although he does shave. Also wearing the same clothes for a week or two at least, despite the fact he's been buying the occasional new item of clothing when we go out on Sundays.
▪ Several instances where he's been asked what he wanted for tea, and he'd give a moody, "absolutely nothing at all" response, then when the food was ready, he'd ask where his was, completely oblivious. Other times he's gotten a meal out, said he wanted that, then proceeded to just open a tin of soup or such like and have that instead.
▪ The other night it was pouring down with rain and he decided he *had* to put a small amount of paper rubbish in the recycling bin outside, which he proceeded to do in just socks; no shoes or anything, so he came back into the house with very wet feet. Could have easily left it until the next morning, but no...
▪ Seems to lose track of the time/date quite easily. Constantly looking at the calendar, getting mixed up over things like when niece stays overnight. Forever writing in his diary and looking things up in it.
▪ Frequently misplacing things, and generally leaving a lot of clutter. Likes to hoard. Has left the TV/Sky remote controls in very odd places when he goes to bed (often when he's been particularly moody and had drinks); in the bin by his chair, under the chair, in a shoe, in a tissue box... Almost like he doesn't want my mum to be able to watch some TV when he goes up to bed (she sleeps downstairs on the sofa due to health issues). We pretty much have to see humour in the situation now; where has he put the remotes tonight?..
▪ Resorted to having the TV on more loudly lately. Thankfully not always and when he does, it's merely been 'quite loud', but sometimes it's far too high. I even helped buy him some Bluetooth Headphones last year for watching stuff, but those don't seem to get any usage now, even though they're right next to the TV on a stand and fairly plug-and-play.
▪ An incident the other month where he was convinced that we had some old knackered tyres taking up space in the garage and he was going to ask my sister to put them on ebay?. We were adamant there were no tyres in the garage (why would we keep old worn ones? They'd be disposed of by the tyre fitters...), and yet he was even more convinced they were in there, telling us he'd show where they were. Eventually discovered the cylindrical barbecue still in its wrapping, which presumably he thought was tyres, but he could have easily felt the thing (and it's much smaller than car tyres) and known it wasn't tyres..
I wrote to his GP outlining my concerns a couple of months back and heard nothing. Likewise my mum sent them a letter more recently after the 111 incident and also heard nothing back. To be fair, it has been ranked the worst surgery in our area out of the 20 operating in the region, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised, but it's incredibly frustrating.
I feel like the drinking in particular has thrown a massive spanner in the works. He can be VERY spiteful towards my mum, has said some very unpleasant things to her (won't say much/anything if I'm in the room, I've had to eavesdrop on some occasions) while in his drunken states, and it's making me quite angry, as she's only ever been nice to him, to everyone really. Sometimes she's been sat doing a puzzle or something and he's whinged at her for not watching him writhe about in pain from his arthritis/joint issues instead, even though she's said countless times to see his GP about it. It's difficult to know how much is down to the dementia and how much is the drink. Then there's the question of why he's drinking, as he doesn't like to talk about it and doesn't seem to think he has a problem. We're not sure if he's drinking because he's noticed changes in himself that he can't understand. We had to call 111 the other month after he had a fall in the driveway after he'd been sat outside drinking, ended up with cuts on his face etc. Unfortunately not very much came of that, which was also disappointing as we were under the impression his GP would had to have been notified.
My mum is planning to visit the local AgeUK for some advice, and I know there is an Alzheimer's chat line which she may want to use. We've been keeping in regular contact with his sister, and I've been mentioning a lot of this to my sister too, but it feels like only myself and my mum really understand just how serious this is, despite the fact we've been pretty thorough in telling them the various things that have happened. He's very clearly suffering from depression of some kind, and it seems to just drag the overall mood down around the house. Now I've had my fair share of issues in the past myself, and I'm obviously not enjoying living in this environment, so it does 'get me down' to some extent but I am looking after myself, eating fine and I've done a lot of running for years so that helps, even if I do end up thinking about the whole predicament for the bulk of the trip out lol. My mum also insists she's fine, and I do tell her she can always talk to me at any time about it. Still, I am concerned about her and I try and keep her company as much as possible, but I'm sure this is also going to be negatively impacting her, and I really want that to stop. It's just so difficult as he doesn't like talking about issues he's having, and frequently shuts us out.
if anyone has any useful suggestions of things to do, I'm all ears. Like I say, he HATES going to Doctors, so it really is a struggle getting him to address health problems, and the cognitive/memory issues means he's forgetting new discussions fairly often. I also question whether he'd do anything about the drinking; he is not the type of person to go to counselling/therapy, AA meetings or anything like that, so I really don't know how to address that issue, particularly as it's causing so many problems, but I know it can't be ignored. There's undoubtedly all sorts of medications that could be prescribed for these problems he's suffering with, and yet the drinking is going to be a major issue there. The fact my niece comes over after school hasn't deterred him from drinking; often has a tumbler of whisky or a glass full of wine while she's here, and she's smart/aware that he drinks often, so naturally I don't want her to think this is normal, but as it's his house (as he likes to point out, although under both parents' names afaik) he's unlikely to listen to his behaviour being called out. I just know it can't keep going on like this, and it's so frustrating that he won't accept other people trying to help him. I'd be interested to know what sort of options are available with regards to ensuring these things get looked at, even if he is adamant he doesn't want to? Obviously under normal circumstances you can't make someone go to their GP about their problems.. But surely if they're presenting a potential danger/risk to themselves or to others (fortunately he's only been nasty -verbally- to my mum to this point, but my concern is if it goes beyond that), then there must be options? I know Social Services are mentioned often on here, but it's how you'd get that initial assessment to confirm these concerns, particularly the dementia stuff, but also the drinking. He can do the host-mode routine for a couple of hours if he wants to, which is my concern with anyone coming to visit him to make any sort of assessment and thinking he's alright. I think the one plus point is he doesn't ask to drive now; we've kept the keys away from him and he hasn't asked for them lately, so that's one less concern.
Really sorry again for the absurdly long post, hadn't intended to write so much😴 Thanks if you've made it this far..😉
Health Issues
What's making this more difficult is the fact he has various issues that he has neglected to see a Doctor about (which have only gotten worse) and he's also drinking very heavily now; many days he is drinking either a bottle of whisky or a large chunk of one and then a bottle wine (two if there's not much whisky). He's always enjoyed a drink, but always in moderation, and now suddenly in the last few months he's been drinking excessively. The other issues include some sort of ongoing long-term urinary issues (UTI likely, there's been some incontinence, very frequent bathroom trips that have to be taken suddenly) and arthritis and other significant joint/limb pains predominantly in the legs that my mum (former nurse) thinks may be gout, which the alcohol would be largely responsible for. He's very old-fashioned and does not like going to doctors; thinks the pain in his body can be relieved with alcohol, when it clearly can't. He is also on medication for high blood pressure, which I'm fairly certain shouldn't be surrounded by bouts of heavy drinking as they could lower it further.
Personality Changes
His personality has changed so much in this time. While he is usually more like his usual self in the mornings, he gets progressively worse as the day goes on, even moreso if he's been drinking. He's pretty miserable most of the time, rarely talks, is quick to get into a mood, lost all interest in things he used to do, often sits in the living room doing absolutely nothing for an hour or two, barring taking a drink from his glass. And yet when my niece comes over after school, he makes at least more of an effort, and when my sister comes in to collect her, he has to make even more of an effort with the "host mode". Exactly the same if we meet up with his sister at somewhere local when she travels down; it's like he's (somewhat) his old self in those couple of hours before we come home and the new personality resumes. It got to a point where we even found bottles of alcohol (from a neighbour's house that he has looked after), in his drinks cabinet; bringing her (presumably out of date, judging by the BBE 2018 Baileys....) old bottles here and consuming them; drinks that he wouldn't normally buy like Schnapps, Cointreau and the Baileys.
Dementia Symptoms
In terms of the Dementia symptoms, aside from the repetitive questioning (will often ask my niece something a few times in the space of half an hour, for example):
▪ Forgetfulness in general and poor short-term memory
▪ Increasingly poor judgement; I've had to save him getting scammed out of considerable amounts of money three times recently. He was literally going to get the driveway expensively renovated just because a car from a dodgy company parked up and had a chat with him about getting it done... No previous inclination about wanting such work done. And it happened again a few weeks later!...
▪ The sundowning/host-mode that I've mentioned. It's like Jekyll/Hyde..
▪ A fixation with closing blinds/curtains early. We noticed this during the Summer when they'd be closed when there was still an hour or two of daylight left, his reasoning being that he didn't like people looking in, even though it would be very difficult to see in from outside, so some elements of paranoia. It was quite common to see him sitting in the living room in these quite dark conditions, doing essentially nothing at all, other than sitting there.
▪ Obsessions, particularly with buying things. There's a garage fridge with lots of orange juice, much of which has long past its best, and it's still occasionally topped up with more. This applies to a lot of food/drink tbh. But aside from that, he's been buying his granddaughter a LOT of clothes, frequently several hundred pounds worth. Given she's at an age where she's still growing, it's unlikely she'll even get much use out of them, particularly with being at school during the week. He even said "that was it" to her the other week when she was going through the latest collection (referring to them being part of her Christmas presents) and yet he's made more orders since then. Done the same thing with backpacks for school, even though she already has one she loves, and won't get to use them. It's like he sees a reduced sticker or a special promotion on and is compelled to buy something. I had to negotiate with Sky on his behalf to ensure he'd keep his TV/internet package as "it was costing too much" and he's forever complained about the various monthly bills/costs and yet now he's blowing so much more money on the drinking, the gifts, wasted food/drink etc.
▪ Depression/moods. He's always had moods, but they dominate most of his days now, certainly at home.
▪ He's fixated on money. When he's been drinking heavily, he will often go on about how he paid for things, paid the mortgage or whatever. But he opened a savings account for his granddaughter and makes a habit of telling her (extensively) when he's put money in, which seems a little inappropriate. Constantly bringing up how much something cost, or "joking" that he needs payment for something he's bought, drives us nuts. He's signed up to numerous charities, it's almost like he's determined to prove he's a good person that is helping others, to his own detriment. Ironically when things like a light bulb go out now or something breaks, he does nothing about it, so it's up to us to sort it out.
▪ Occasionally finding doors unlocked if he's gone out, or in the case of the other day, he locked the back door, even though he knew I was outside tidying up the garden/garage. On some of the occasions he's left the door open, he's actually "locked" the door, but not into the actual frame, so it was basically slightly ajar. It's still infrequent at this stage thankfully, but the fact it's happening is alarming.
▪ Loss of appetite/noticeable weight loss. Sometimes he doesn't have any lunch or tea, other times it's just a microwave burger or some soup, perhaps a sandwich. Only seems to deal with very basic meals now. In fact, his tea tonight was two corn cobs. Literally just that. He put out some dessert to eat after, but decided to have a banana and forgot about the dessert he'd left out...
▪ Poor personal hygiene; not sure he's even having baths now; is instead standing up in the bathroom at the sink and cleaning himself that way, often leaving a lot of wet patches on the floor. Although he does shave. Also wearing the same clothes for a week or two at least, despite the fact he's been buying the occasional new item of clothing when we go out on Sundays.
▪ Several instances where he's been asked what he wanted for tea, and he'd give a moody, "absolutely nothing at all" response, then when the food was ready, he'd ask where his was, completely oblivious. Other times he's gotten a meal out, said he wanted that, then proceeded to just open a tin of soup or such like and have that instead.
▪ The other night it was pouring down with rain and he decided he *had* to put a small amount of paper rubbish in the recycling bin outside, which he proceeded to do in just socks; no shoes or anything, so he came back into the house with very wet feet. Could have easily left it until the next morning, but no...
▪ Seems to lose track of the time/date quite easily. Constantly looking at the calendar, getting mixed up over things like when niece stays overnight. Forever writing in his diary and looking things up in it.
▪ Frequently misplacing things, and generally leaving a lot of clutter. Likes to hoard. Has left the TV/Sky remote controls in very odd places when he goes to bed (often when he's been particularly moody and had drinks); in the bin by his chair, under the chair, in a shoe, in a tissue box... Almost like he doesn't want my mum to be able to watch some TV when he goes up to bed (she sleeps downstairs on the sofa due to health issues). We pretty much have to see humour in the situation now; where has he put the remotes tonight?..
▪ Resorted to having the TV on more loudly lately. Thankfully not always and when he does, it's merely been 'quite loud', but sometimes it's far too high. I even helped buy him some Bluetooth Headphones last year for watching stuff, but those don't seem to get any usage now, even though they're right next to the TV on a stand and fairly plug-and-play.
▪ An incident the other month where he was convinced that we had some old knackered tyres taking up space in the garage and he was going to ask my sister to put them on ebay?. We were adamant there were no tyres in the garage (why would we keep old worn ones? They'd be disposed of by the tyre fitters...), and yet he was even more convinced they were in there, telling us he'd show where they were. Eventually discovered the cylindrical barbecue still in its wrapping, which presumably he thought was tyres, but he could have easily felt the thing (and it's much smaller than car tyres) and known it wasn't tyres..
I wrote to his GP outlining my concerns a couple of months back and heard nothing. Likewise my mum sent them a letter more recently after the 111 incident and also heard nothing back. To be fair, it has been ranked the worst surgery in our area out of the 20 operating in the region, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised, but it's incredibly frustrating.
I feel like the drinking in particular has thrown a massive spanner in the works. He can be VERY spiteful towards my mum, has said some very unpleasant things to her (won't say much/anything if I'm in the room, I've had to eavesdrop on some occasions) while in his drunken states, and it's making me quite angry, as she's only ever been nice to him, to everyone really. Sometimes she's been sat doing a puzzle or something and he's whinged at her for not watching him writhe about in pain from his arthritis/joint issues instead, even though she's said countless times to see his GP about it. It's difficult to know how much is down to the dementia and how much is the drink. Then there's the question of why he's drinking, as he doesn't like to talk about it and doesn't seem to think he has a problem. We're not sure if he's drinking because he's noticed changes in himself that he can't understand. We had to call 111 the other month after he had a fall in the driveway after he'd been sat outside drinking, ended up with cuts on his face etc. Unfortunately not very much came of that, which was also disappointing as we were under the impression his GP would had to have been notified.
My mum is planning to visit the local AgeUK for some advice, and I know there is an Alzheimer's chat line which she may want to use. We've been keeping in regular contact with his sister, and I've been mentioning a lot of this to my sister too, but it feels like only myself and my mum really understand just how serious this is, despite the fact we've been pretty thorough in telling them the various things that have happened. He's very clearly suffering from depression of some kind, and it seems to just drag the overall mood down around the house. Now I've had my fair share of issues in the past myself, and I'm obviously not enjoying living in this environment, so it does 'get me down' to some extent but I am looking after myself, eating fine and I've done a lot of running for years so that helps, even if I do end up thinking about the whole predicament for the bulk of the trip out lol. My mum also insists she's fine, and I do tell her she can always talk to me at any time about it. Still, I am concerned about her and I try and keep her company as much as possible, but I'm sure this is also going to be negatively impacting her, and I really want that to stop. It's just so difficult as he doesn't like talking about issues he's having, and frequently shuts us out.
if anyone has any useful suggestions of things to do, I'm all ears. Like I say, he HATES going to Doctors, so it really is a struggle getting him to address health problems, and the cognitive/memory issues means he's forgetting new discussions fairly often. I also question whether he'd do anything about the drinking; he is not the type of person to go to counselling/therapy, AA meetings or anything like that, so I really don't know how to address that issue, particularly as it's causing so many problems, but I know it can't be ignored. There's undoubtedly all sorts of medications that could be prescribed for these problems he's suffering with, and yet the drinking is going to be a major issue there. The fact my niece comes over after school hasn't deterred him from drinking; often has a tumbler of whisky or a glass full of wine while she's here, and she's smart/aware that he drinks often, so naturally I don't want her to think this is normal, but as it's his house (as he likes to point out, although under both parents' names afaik) he's unlikely to listen to his behaviour being called out. I just know it can't keep going on like this, and it's so frustrating that he won't accept other people trying to help him. I'd be interested to know what sort of options are available with regards to ensuring these things get looked at, even if he is adamant he doesn't want to? Obviously under normal circumstances you can't make someone go to their GP about their problems.. But surely if they're presenting a potential danger/risk to themselves or to others (fortunately he's only been nasty -verbally- to my mum to this point, but my concern is if it goes beyond that), then there must be options? I know Social Services are mentioned often on here, but it's how you'd get that initial assessment to confirm these concerns, particularly the dementia stuff, but also the drinking. He can do the host-mode routine for a couple of hours if he wants to, which is my concern with anyone coming to visit him to make any sort of assessment and thinking he's alright. I think the one plus point is he doesn't ask to drive now; we've kept the keys away from him and he hasn't asked for them lately, so that's one less concern.
Really sorry again for the absurdly long post, hadn't intended to write so much😴 Thanks if you've made it this far..😉
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