Personal hygiene

[Lycatu]

Hello, I’m new to this forum.
My mum has vascular dementia, she is 94. Lives alone with lots of support from me, my husband and Age UK day centre.
Unfortunately she is a little incontinent which would not be an issue if she was bathing/showering properly. She washes at the bathroom sink, but as my nurse friend says, you can’t clean all the cracks and crevices that way. .she won’t have a carer in her house to help her and I have to say, at this point, I do not want to be doing this personal care, I have arranged for her to bathe at age UK once a week, but she keeps refusing to do so. She no longer is willing or able to shower . Consequently, her clothes smell, she is not changing them enough, my attempts to make her change more and wash are met with hostility. her sofa smells so bad I have to wash my clothes after visiting her. I’ve had to be brutal and tell her she smells of urine, she said I don’t think I do. Well she has little sense of smell due to childhood illness.
Any suggestions before I go mad please.
Thanks for reading
Lynne

 

[Louise7]

Hello @Lycatu and welcome, you will find lots of friendly support here from people who understand. It's common for someone with dementia to say that they don't need any help and won't have a carer but there does come a stage when what someone needs becomes more important than what they want. It is also common to not want to wash or shower and this could be due to a number of reasons such as fear of water or forgetting how to shower/wash themselves, for example my mum didn't like getting water over her face but accepted a bath better than a shower. It's understandable that you feel the way that you do, and sometimes people do respond better to someone other than a family member telling them what to do, often a carer in uniform will be able to change and wash someone when they have previously resisted. As your mum is at risk of infection then I think it's worth trying a professional carer to see if that will help the situation. I'm sure others will be along to share their own experience or offer suggestions as this is such a common problem but so hard to deal with. Sometimes it's a case of trying various techniques to see what might work - perhaps a wash down with a flannel rather than suggesting a bath/shower - so you may find the fact sheet below useful in terms of suggestions that you may not have tried yet. Hope this helps.

https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/get-support/daily-living/washing-dressing