Hi guys,
I'm the 29 year old daughter of a a 56 year old lady with early on-set Alzheimers, two years into diagnosis. I live at home with her still, helping out, along with her partner of 18 years, who is 62. Just want to give a bit of context as I feel our ages play a part in this issue.
As you probably all know the challenges are varied, and change frequently in stages and waves. These days, we're having particular trouble with personal care. My mother is double incontinent, and requires help with dressing and washing, we take care of all that, I was hoping to starting looking into getting assistance with this before the pandemic hit. Primarily because Mum has become resistant to almost any step to do with personal care. I feel like it may be due to incidents where she has shown resistance or reluctance before, and we've shown frustration, and then that memory or association with the process and that response becoming engrained or subliminal. Also because it's my stepdad and I doing it, we have very different temperaments, I a freelance TV makeup artist (apparently the creative mindset attributes to a way of thinking up a way around things a dementia navigator once told me), and he a policeman, retired to take care of Mum. Where I think some things are a good idea, he'll think others are, and it's hard to argue because the techniques each work at different times. But if we try and propose it's time to get dressed, or to wash when we know for a fact it's necessary, or brush her teeth, the all get resistance and refusal. Because she is double incontinent, going to the toilet is a behaviour or habit she has completely fallen out of and never looks for it, and when I ask if she needs it, or say let's just see, though I'm occasionally successful begrudgingly, it still doesn't negate the hygiene issues with double incontinence. She doesn't let me know if she needs it, it's just if I make her sit on the toilet just to see if anything happens. Usually I just take advantage of her sat down to change her trousers and pants while she's seated; as if that were the incentive. If a shower is needed, 90% of the time I'd say I'm unable to do that, and my stepdad is only successful if he's insistent. And I know that can only be pushed or trusted as a technique so far, as as she 'deteriorates' she's going to be wilful more physically than verbally, as she feels like her words aren't being heeded effectively. I worry about that even know. Though I try and maintain patience, and consistent pleasant tone, I've been grabbed by the hair or had a slipper help unto me to hit me with it when I've been bent down to hold trousers open for her to step into. And it seems like it is more the activity than the varying ways in which we approach it. But how can this be navigated when these are essential practices for health and wellbeing? I'm starting to worry about our inefficiency as caregivers, though I felt like there's still much of her there to benefit being at home around us. And she's fine in between anything to do with hygiene, bar getting us up and wanting company during the night.
We choose our battles, and toothbrushing and hair washing have really fallen by the way side. Recently asking her to brush her teeth, using a nonchalant throwaway tone, or a more insistent tone, she completely ignores me and gets into her bed. Dead toothbrush, she wouldn't use it because it wasn't charged, charged she's not using it. Me doing it with her, no. Cleaned it brand new, no. We're getting her to a hairdressers soon and that's how we'll wash her hair, limit the processes we have to worry about. When my stepdad helps her get read and changed or cleaned, she starts calling him a peodophile and that he's not safe around little girls, so maybe Mum's age to herself has regressed but this isn't substantiated in other areas. I can't tell if it's just ammunition because he's an older man, though a couple of times, she has actually been very scared. But again whether this is more towards the process, or a legitimate belief that he isn't safe I'm not sure. And when I do it I get the sassiest sarcasm you've ever seen haha. I'll get refusal but with the wriest smile, or I'll get told I'm useless with belligerence, or somewhere in between.
We've been asked whether someone in uniform would be more effective, or other an older woman would work, and these are all processes of elimination I suppose we'd work through when other people can come into the equation. But there's nothing I can spot, in any clarity of mind because we can't get away from it, and whilst these things need attempts to be solved daily, multiple times a day, that are triggering her or may help her in getting these essential processes completed without distress. And stress. For all involved.
I've read fact sheets, and now looking to Teepa Snow to see if she has tips, and I know there must be a million factors, but I was just wondering if anyone else is having these problems and to this degree?
Sarah x
I'm the 29 year old daughter of a a 56 year old lady with early on-set Alzheimers, two years into diagnosis. I live at home with her still, helping out, along with her partner of 18 years, who is 62. Just want to give a bit of context as I feel our ages play a part in this issue.
As you probably all know the challenges are varied, and change frequently in stages and waves. These days, we're having particular trouble with personal care. My mother is double incontinent, and requires help with dressing and washing, we take care of all that, I was hoping to starting looking into getting assistance with this before the pandemic hit. Primarily because Mum has become resistant to almost any step to do with personal care. I feel like it may be due to incidents where she has shown resistance or reluctance before, and we've shown frustration, and then that memory or association with the process and that response becoming engrained or subliminal. Also because it's my stepdad and I doing it, we have very different temperaments, I a freelance TV makeup artist (apparently the creative mindset attributes to a way of thinking up a way around things a dementia navigator once told me), and he a policeman, retired to take care of Mum. Where I think some things are a good idea, he'll think others are, and it's hard to argue because the techniques each work at different times. But if we try and propose it's time to get dressed, or to wash when we know for a fact it's necessary, or brush her teeth, the all get resistance and refusal. Because she is double incontinent, going to the toilet is a behaviour or habit she has completely fallen out of and never looks for it, and when I ask if she needs it, or say let's just see, though I'm occasionally successful begrudgingly, it still doesn't negate the hygiene issues with double incontinence. She doesn't let me know if she needs it, it's just if I make her sit on the toilet just to see if anything happens. Usually I just take advantage of her sat down to change her trousers and pants while she's seated; as if that were the incentive. If a shower is needed, 90% of the time I'd say I'm unable to do that, and my stepdad is only successful if he's insistent. And I know that can only be pushed or trusted as a technique so far, as as she 'deteriorates' she's going to be wilful more physically than verbally, as she feels like her words aren't being heeded effectively. I worry about that even know. Though I try and maintain patience, and consistent pleasant tone, I've been grabbed by the hair or had a slipper help unto me to hit me with it when I've been bent down to hold trousers open for her to step into. And it seems like it is more the activity than the varying ways in which we approach it. But how can this be navigated when these are essential practices for health and wellbeing? I'm starting to worry about our inefficiency as caregivers, though I felt like there's still much of her there to benefit being at home around us. And she's fine in between anything to do with hygiene, bar getting us up and wanting company during the night.
We choose our battles, and toothbrushing and hair washing have really fallen by the way side. Recently asking her to brush her teeth, using a nonchalant throwaway tone, or a more insistent tone, she completely ignores me and gets into her bed. Dead toothbrush, she wouldn't use it because it wasn't charged, charged she's not using it. Me doing it with her, no. Cleaned it brand new, no. We're getting her to a hairdressers soon and that's how we'll wash her hair, limit the processes we have to worry about. When my stepdad helps her get read and changed or cleaned, she starts calling him a peodophile and that he's not safe around little girls, so maybe Mum's age to herself has regressed but this isn't substantiated in other areas. I can't tell if it's just ammunition because he's an older man, though a couple of times, she has actually been very scared. But again whether this is more towards the process, or a legitimate belief that he isn't safe I'm not sure. And when I do it I get the sassiest sarcasm you've ever seen haha. I'll get refusal but with the wriest smile, or I'll get told I'm useless with belligerence, or somewhere in between.
We've been asked whether someone in uniform would be more effective, or other an older woman would work, and these are all processes of elimination I suppose we'd work through when other people can come into the equation. But there's nothing I can spot, in any clarity of mind because we can't get away from it, and whilst these things need attempts to be solved daily, multiple times a day, that are triggering her or may help her in getting these essential processes completed without distress. And stress. For all involved.
I've read fact sheets, and now looking to Teepa Snow to see if she has tips, and I know there must be a million factors, but I was just wondering if anyone else is having these problems and to this degree?
Sarah x