Dementia Support Group

I am a 41 year old mother of 2. I moved my 93 year old grandmother in with my family in May 2010. Both my dad and mom are deceased and so is my aunt. That just leaves the grandchildren. When we decide to move my grandmother in with us, we spoke to our kids, age 13 and 17, and explained everything we could about Dementia and the changes they would see in her over time.

For the most part she can take care of herself. With her age and the dementia progressing, she can't stay by herself. Her memory comes and goes. I know one day we will have to put her in a nursing home, but want to keep her with family as long as possible. Right now we are having alot of trouble with her wanting to argue with us or saying that someone is stealing her things, (most of the time she gets up in the night and hides things and doesn't remember it in the morning), or she says that a ghost has come in and stole them.

I feel guilty for getting mad with her, I know it is not her but the dementia, but she is so stubborn. She will take things that she has heard and turn them around to fit the story she is telling. She repeats herself over and over. She starts arguement with my 13 year old son because she knows he will get mad. He gets the blame for things that have nothing to do with him. He is trying very hard and so am I, but momma wants to defend her cub. It can be very hard at times and she will follow you if you try to walk away to calm down. We try and change the subject, but she either gets mad or pouts.

She worries over every little thing, even if it does not have anything to do with her. She knows that something is going on with her mind, but when we have tried to explain, she gets mad and says that we are trying to make her think she is crazy. I love my grandmother and she took me and my sisters in when our parents died. I want to keep her with us as long as possible. I have one sister that tries to help when she can, but she has a 2 year old and a 6 month old. She does what she can when she can. We both are at a loss on how to handle her when she gets in a fretting state. We have spoke to her doctor and he says to do what we can and remember that is going to get worse.

Anyone have any advice? Sometimes I feel like I need a life line. Even a thread will do.

Hi and welcome, First thing, I am really glad that you have been able to take your Grandmother in. I am sure it has been very challenging for all of you to try to adjust to having her there, especially when her behavior is so illogical sometimes.

When my Grandma first started getting arguementative we figured out after a while that it was better not to try to reason with her because even though we could win all the logical reasoning, she was still mad, and then it would just start over again about 30 seconds later (not always about the same thing, but something). None of us were 13 though and it would have been a lot harder if we were. If at all possible make some sort of "safe zone" where your son can go that Grandma can't, even if he has to resort to the garage, or a tree house, or having a room with a lock and permission to lock it. You may already have that in place, but if not, you may want to brainstorm with him places he could go to get some space when he needs it, especially if she is trying to pick fights with him.

Does it work at all when she starts accusing to deflect with something like "What does the _____ look like so that we can all be looking for it? I will let you know if I find it." or "I will add that to the list of things to get from Wal-mart so that you will have one"? With my Grandma the part that concerned her the most early on was that she couldn't find it, not that she really believed that someone was stealing things. Once she had it (or another one) she was less concerned. It was important though to make sure that she knew that someone was really listening carefully to her concerns and not just trying to say something without paying attention (Grandpa tended to do this sometimes and it got him into trouble). Actually looking for whatever it is for a couple minutes tends to help too, even if you aren't able to find it right away.

Later on in her dementia she did start to have delusions and hallucinations where she did start actually seeing people who weren't there carrying away her furniture and she was really convinced it was gone until my Dad took her room to room and showed her everything was still where it should be, but that is a bit different. She also had times she thought we were trying to poison her food ect. If you find yourself dealing with a situation like that I highly recommend taking her to a psychiatrist. It was a huge help to my Grandma (and the rest of us) once things got that bad.

With my Grandparents, if they knew that they had dementia they forgot it. They remembered that they took pills for memory though and didn't have a problem with taking a "memory" pill or two (along with a bunch of heart pills and other various things). I am sure they would have freaked out if they knew exactly what dementia is, but having worse memory with age was not so bad. It wasn't really an accurate picture of what they were dealing with, but it was acknoledging something and I wasn't going to push for full understanding since it would be so overwhelming.

I hope some of this helps with your situation.

Thank you for the advice. Most of what she says goes missing is her clothes and things she says can't be replaced. Looking for the items just gets her more upset until we find it. She does sometimes have hallucinaions and I believe that she is having delusions. We listen and try to assure her the best we can. The good days are very good and the bad days are very bad. We just take one day at a time. My son thanks you for the advice about the safe zone.

Tell your son he is welcome, I hope you can find a really good place.

If you try everything you can think of and nothing will calm her down, it may be time to think about medical intervention. At least with my Grandma there came a point where none of our previous methods worked (not even giving her chocolate or lemon pie which previously distracted her nicely), this was around the time that we realized we were dealing with actual delusions (not just confusion) and hallucinations. We couldn't talk her out of them either, even when we finally understood what she was thinking and seeing.

It helped a lot when she started taking medication. I know it might not work as well for everyone, but it made life much better for both us and Grandma (she was pretty miserable being so scared all the time). It was a weird thought to have my Grandma who had never had trouble with any sort of mental illness seeing a psychiatrist (and I was glad that she didn't really know what kind of doctor we were taking her to), but he really did help her.

Even after that though, there were still good days and bad days. One day at a time is pretty much the only way to do it since you can never really plan for how things are going to be on any given day.