Throw stuffs away: is it a normal reaction?

SmogTheCat

Registered User
Sep 1, 2005
45
0
Italy
My Grandmother uses to throw away stuffs without any good reason. Sometimes she throw away things thar are still good...
For example, a t-shirt is dirty? She throw away instead of washing it... If we try to explain her that she can wash she get angry and aggressive.
An other example. We use to buy bread in the supermarket then put it in the fridge and defron only the bread for the day. Since a couple of months we can't do this with Grandmother because when she keeps braed from the fridge, she trhrow it in the trash!
Is this a normal reaction for Alzheimer?
 

janey21

Registered User
Mar 11, 2004
29
0
sunderland
the opposite to this!!

buon giorno smog the cat,como estai?

my grandad was the exact opposite to throwing stuff away, he would keep stuff all the time even tissues and when me and my mam completely gutted his room we found lots of things even biscuits that he had taken upstairs but not wanted to throw out.

"throw stuffs away: is it a normal reaction?"

what is normal really when it comes to dementia? i suppose each to their own but at least we can discuss and see if anyone has the same experiences as ourselves.

janey x x x
 

Brucie

Registered User
Jan 31, 2004
12,413
0
near London
Hello SmogTheCat

anything that is not normal for most people can become normal for somebody who has Alzheimer's.

For all of us, the world that we see is managed by our brains, and when we are 'normal' we mostly see things the same as everybody else.

When the brain is damaged in some way, including when somebody has dementia, suddenly things can become distorted. Shadows become people, pieces of tissue paper become valuable and need to be stored all over the house.

Because devices like washing machines become too difficult to understand, the easiest thing is to throw away dirty clothes - that saves confusion and anger when they can't work the machine - or can't remember how to wash things by hand.

If you take bread out of a freezer, it is hard, frozen. To someone with dementia, it may therefore seem very stale - because stale food becomes hard.

Try to put yourself in her situation and make the seemingly crazy things more easy to understand. It is not easy!!!
 

Sheila

Registered User
Oct 23, 2003
2,259
0
West Sussex
Hi Smogthecat, oh yes, I know it well! M in L is doing just the same at present. It is exasperating isn't it? Afraid as the others already said, we have to just go with the flow, its part of it. Love She. XX
 

KarenC

Registered User
Jun 2, 2005
122
0
Los Angeles, USA
A friend's late mother-in-law who had dementia was always trying to throw away her eye-glasses and hearing aid ... which she needed to see and hear. :confused:

Karen