Packing to go "home"

[Bill_t]

Just found my wife packing to go "home" yet again. Third time in four days.

We have driven round looking for "home", she has walked out of the house to go "home" and stopped at the end of the drive in total confusion.

I have tried humouring her, distracting her and plain telling her she is wrong. What can I do - it's driving me mad.

 

[Wozzie]

We have this regularly with mum
I try all kinds of distractions- lets have a coffee first, your mums out at the moment, can you help me tidy here first .....
The list goes on, I show her the family photos, saying these are here because this is your home. Likewise with her clothes.....
Times can be frustrating but you'll find a way to work through it
Really feel for you
Take care
Anne

 

[Chemmy]

The Going home request is very common. I have had it explained to me that it is not necessarily the need to return to an actual place but more a feeling of wanting to go back to a time when life was normal.

Same as when my mum used to call me 'mum'. It was due to a deep-seated feeling that only her mum would be able to make things right again.

Even when their other reasoning has gone, these basic instinctive feelings seem to remain

Distraction is the best solution.

 

[Grannie G]

Hello Bill.

I`m afraid it will be a case of trial and error and often, as with my husband, there was nothing I could do.

Sometimes I let him go, then followed at a distance. When it seemed he didn`t know which way to go I `met` him and offered to take him home and brought him back. It worked occasionally.

Our son might come and take him `home` to his house. That worked occasionally.

I also tried delaying tactics.....it`s too cold , too dark, too windy, let`s leave it till tomorrow, can`t find the key.

What I do know is insisting he was already at home never worked for us.

It`s a terrible time I know and I wish I could be more helpful.

 

[love.dad.but..]

Unfortunately I never found a solution to this problem with dad regardless of how many things I tried. He always got fully dressed and coat scarf gloves and stick even in summer and sat waiting to go home or out. The phase went on for quite a while then passed but usually it is replaced by some other worry for the pwd and yes it is draining isn't it.

 

[Andrew_McP]

I wish I had a useful answer! I've tried everything suggested here and in similar discussions already with my mother, but once she's set her mind on leaving it takes force to restrain her, and that definitely doesn't help. Which is how we can end up wandering the town centre at 4am, or waiting for a bus which -- thankfully! -- never comes at 1am. If it's during the day we can end up on the bus to her old home, ten miles away, trying to find her father, who died 40 years ago. It's heartbreaking and exhausting in equal measure.

Fortunately cold, weariness, or disappointment eventually wear her down, or she starts to worry about the dog (the poor thing has to follow her everywhere whether it wants to or not). So we usually get back safely to her 'miserable prison'. But it's the first time in my life when I've wished I had a car so we could drive 'home' until she fell asleep or I 'got lost'. Not that I could afford to run a car on what I can earn now, but it'd be worth every penny of going bankrupt if it worked.

I have had limited success with using lorazepam to calm her when she gets particularly agitated, but that's a risky strategy because if she insists on leaving and is wobbly on her feet she could end up stumbling, as happened on Boxing Day after I'd resorted to chemical assistance to avoid being Boxed again. I got lucky then because the scuffed knee made her leg ache, making it easier to get her on the bus back here again... I was going to say 'home' again, but these days even I've started to wonder where home is!

What's making life tricky at the moment though is that on top of wanting to go back to her childhood home, Mum's now started to want to find *this* address, believing that we're not really here even after I show her the street sign. We have to walk into town then get the bus back along the route we've just walked so that she's following a familiar ritual to get here. Then when we arrive she ends up disappointed that it's just the same as when we left. I've toyed with letting her wander while I rearrange the house and slosh on some paint to make it look different, but... But clutching at straws can become a full time and totally useless hobby for carers.

Still, you've got to cling to something amid the wreckage of the sinking ship. Anything to keep you afloat! I'm currently clinging to a Tesco Triple Chocolate Cookie and can feel my teeth rotting and my arteries hardening even as I type with sticky fingers.

Good luck.

Andrew... waving, not drowning, probably ;-)

 

[love.dad.but..]

I wish I had a useful answer! I've tried everything suggested here and in similar discussions already with my mother, but once she's set her mind on leaving it takes force to restrain her, and that definitely doesn't help. Which is how we can end up wandering the town centre at 4am, or waiting for a bus which -- thankfully! -- never comes at 1am. If it's during the day we can end up on the bus to her old home, ten miles away, trying to find her father, who died 40 years ago. It's heartbreaking and exhausting in equal measure.

Fortunately cold, weariness, or disappointment eventually wear her down, or she starts to worry about the dog (the poor thing has to follow her everywhere whether it wants to or not). So we usually get back safely to her 'miserable prison'. But it's the first time in my life when I've wished I had a car so we could drive 'home' until she fell asleep or I 'got lost'. Not that I could afford to run a car on what I can earn now, but it'd be worth every penny of going bankrupt if it worked.

I have had limited success with using lorazepam to calm her when she gets particularly agitated, but that's a risky strategy because if she insists on leaving and is wobbly on her feet she could end up stumbling, as happened on Boxing Day after I'd resorted to chemical assistance to avoid being Boxed again. I got lucky then because the scuffed knee made her leg ache, making it easier to get her on the bus back here again... I was going to say 'home' again, but these days even I've started to wonder where home is!

What's making life tricky at the moment though is that on top of wanting to go back to her childhood home, Mum's now started to want to find *this* address, believing that we're not really here even after I show her the street sign. We have to walk into town then get the bus back along the route we've just walked so that she's following a familiar ritual to get here. Then when we arrive she ends up disappointed that it's just the same as when we left. I've toyed with letting her wander while I rearrange the house and slosh on some paint to make it look different, but... But clutching at straws can become a full time and totally useless hobby for carers.

Still, you've got to cling to something amid the wreckage of the sinking ship. Anything to keep you afloat! I'm currently clinging to a Tesco Triple Chocolate Cookie and can feel my teeth rotting and my arteries hardening even as I type with sticky fingers.

Good luck.

Andrew... waving, not drowning, probably ;-)

I feel your pain Andrew dad was always a nighttime pacer and determined to get ready to go out at 2am. However...your last paragraph made me chuckle, if we are going to get dementia what's a few hardened arteries between tp friends!

 

[LynneMcV]

I haven't had the regular 'packing to go home' syndrome yet - however around this time last year my husband's condition progressed suddenly and quickly.

Part of the driving force behind him at that time was the strong belief that he needed to leave us and go home to Scotland in order to be safe (he believed we were plotting to kill him).

He never actually packed any bags but he was constantly in the bedroom counting money he had put aside and 'hidden' in a bedside cabinet, which he would then stuff into his pockets while he awaited the right moment to escape.

To cut a long story short, he eventually ended up in a secure unit for a couple of months - during which time I fitted locks to the bedroom doors.

I now lock the bedroom door every day once we are ready to go downstairs in the morning. I tell him it is to keep the cat out (which is partly true) and he seems to accept this explanation.

The money in the bedside table is still there but, for the most part, he seems to have forgotten about it. Once or twice he has become mildly agitated and gone up to the bedroom (I suspect, to count the money) but by the time he has got up the stairs and been confronted with a locked door, he quickly forgets what he went up to do and (so far) has been quite happy to come back downstairs for a cuppa.

Maybe if you do something similar to hamper your wife's efforts to pack her bags, it might give enough time to turn the situation around?

 

[Tattoo Lane]

You may find this video helpful * Going home* by Teepa Snow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGqYaRhjxrM and also


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmPQLf9IUNI this one explains what may be going on in their minds when they ask to "go home".

 

[Scarlett123]

My husband would wake me in the middle of the night, telling me to hurry up or we'd miss the plane, as he had to go home. I used to say the flight was delayed and we'd go home tomorrow.

He'd drop off to sleep immediately, whilst I tossed and turned. The next day he'd forgotten the incident, and would ask instead if I was "with child" (his expression), or were we getting married.