Grandpa With Alzheimer's

[tinytherese]

He's had it for years and refused any help from a doctor. My grandma takes care of him, but it's really tough on her. He keeps asking the same question multiple times since he forgets so easily. My dad and grandma sometimes get s frustrated with him that they just flat out lie saying under at a volume that he can't hear that he'll forget what they said anyway. He's my paternal grandpa.

On top of that he's hard of hearing and despite that he has a hearing aid we have to yell multiple times for him to hear our response.

I find it especially annoying when he asks me about college because I transfered multiple times, am making up credits over the summer, and return to school for just two days to give my senior presentation and hand in my senior portfolio. He doesn't understand what I'm talking about since he never went past 9th grade.

He's fascinated with colors like never before. "That's the orangest thing I've ever seen! What is it?"

"A carrot."

He spends his time staring out the window, constantly mowing the lawn, and taking walks. On these walks he picks up used plastic cups and silverwear claiming that they're brand new. Grandma takes them and secretly throws them away. He tells my grandma all about his p oop when after going to the bathroom.

My grandma once left the house with him all alone and despite the note that he read he panicked. He gets confused when in a place that he's never been to before and immediately wants to go home. My grandma, dad, and aunt have been known to laugh at his expense, mock him, and call him a dummy, things like that. I regret to say that I have laughed at his expense too and told stories about his behaviors for laughs since I'm in an environment with such activity going on. Fortunately with his awful hearing he doesn't realize that we're doing it. I'm living with my parents and younger brother at the moment and every week my dad, brother, and I visit my grandparents.

I know that grandpa can't help the way that he's acting and that it's the Alzheimer's not him, but he isn't easy to be around. Certain members of the family don't totally get that though. Dad and grandma are reading about his condition at least. My dad and his sister especially don't have the patience to deal with him.

Before he came down with this he wasn't well-liked. He was known for constantly picking at and intentionally irking people. Grandma didn't even marry him because she loved him, but because in her mind it just made sense to marry him since he made a decent living and they were comfortable around each other since her sister married his brother. Throughout the course of their marriage he didn't compliment her or thank her for doing anything, but only told her when she did something that he didn't like. She focused on raising my dad and his siblings and my grandparents had friends that they spent time with, but the kids are full grown and most if not all of their friends are dead now.

Does anyone have advice on how to cope with someone with Alzheimer's?

[CatherineM]

Keep things simple. Ask them to talk about things that happened decades ago because they will remember that better. Try to separate the person you love from the illness.

[tinytherese]

bump

[dUSt]

My grandma has dimentia and will call me several times a day, sometimes within minutes of eachother, and engage me in the same conversation.

I just start the conversation over and try to make it different each time, for my own sake. haha

At first, we told her, "you just asked me that", but now, we just roll with it.

I think it's important to keep your grandpa at home and not take him out too much. The same routine is best. Imagine how you'd feel if suddenly you were at a restaurant, but you have no idea how you got there. It'd freak you out.

I don't think there's anything wrong with laughing at the situation, as long as it is in love and not hateful. We make fun of my grandma all the time, but she laughs with us.

[hotpink]

Honestly, there's a point when it would be better to get him out of the house and into a nursing home. Your poor grandmother has suffered her whole life with an miserable man. He's abusive and unkind and now he needs help like a small child. He needs 24/7 care and probably shouldn't be taking walks alone. If your family dosn't want to do the nursing home route you should look into a home health aid or other care options.

The strain on your grandma (or anyone) to be a full time caregiver is enough to shorten their life. She's a prisioner in her own home chained to a man who may have never loved her.

What would happned if she slipped an fell or otherwise got hurt...or needed to leave? Or if he did something that was too much for her to handle?

Someone's got to have a long, hard look at the situation and do what's best for everyone.

[tinytherese]

My grandma needed knee surgery two years ago which required her to stay at the hospital for days. My mom, her side of the family, and I thought it was ridiculous that neither my dad nor his sister would take care of grandpa during that time that he was home alone. They gave him meals and took him to the hospital to visit her, but wouldn't stay at his home with him. I prayed for his safety and miraculously nothing happened to him.

He saw and read an article about alzheimers in the paper or a magazine, and stated that it must be really going around, but didn't realize that he has it.

[Spem in alium]

Although I don't have experience with Alzheimer's, I can relate. My grandmother's sister has a severe mental illness and has been deaf since her 20s. She is a widow and has no children. Her parents treated her unkindly as does my grandmother, and now my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins all put her down, ridicule her behind her back and to her face, and make fun of her illness.

My parents, siblings and I help her out, but it can be difficult when she gets angry, forgets things, has trouble hearing (which, despite her hearing aids and cochlear implants, is pretty much all the time) and is indecisive. We try to overlook her illness, because she is really a kind, generous and caring person who is very misunderstood.

Treat your grandfather with the greatest level of love, care, patience and respect that you can. Do not join in with those who laugh at him. Look for the best in people, even if they aren't particularly likeable and even if their true selves are clouded by illness. Remember that in the end, we are all children of God.

[MissScripture]

My grandfather had alzheimer's and it was horrible to watch him deteriorate. We were very blessed, however, that he was very docile and my grandma was "easily" able to take care of him at home. There were only one or two times that he didn't want to listen to her and tried to do his own thing, and he never got violent. But it was, by no means, a truly easy task. I spent a couple weeks with them over a few summers, and it was crushing to me to see how hard it was on my grandma. She would go into the bathroom and cry sometimes, when he made comments that clearly indicated he had no idea who she was or where he was. But through it all, Grandpa recognized that Grandma was pretty special, and would talk about his "angel" and how she took such good care of him.

dUSt is right that sometimes it's okay to laugh about some of the strange stuff they do. We still joke about the time my Grandpa put frozen strawberries on his lasagna, or how he'd point to an airplane and talk about the "bus in the sky" or call the squirrels "monkeys" and the deer "big dogs." (It made for some interesting story telling by him!) If it's vicious, that's different, and you should probably just try to stay out of the conversation.

The biggest thing is to realize that the person is not acting this way intentionally, and let things roll off your back. If he asks you about school, just give a simple answer, such as you like all your classes or things are going well or something like that. But along with forgetting everything, they're also losing inhibitions they would've had before (like talking about poo). Their brains literally are being destroyed.

[tinytherese]

What's especially difficult is that most people in the family including me didn't like him before he came down with this illness because of how obnoxious it was to have him intentionally irritate us constantly and the fact that we had to yell multiple times to talk to him. He wears hearing aids, but they don't seem to make any difference.

[MissScripture]

I know how that goes. We are convinced that my Grandma mistakenly reuses dead batteries in her hearing aids.

[sixpence]

My grandpa had alzheimers. It was tough. He would wander off, or easily get confused or angry, or think I was my mom. It is a big test of patience. I agree it is easiest to talk about things that they remember and try to be comforting, it must be a really scary thing to have.

[MissyP89]

We're dealing with this in my family, too. My grandmother often gets frustrated when she's in the middle of a story and just ... forgets. We try to make her laugh over it. Thankfully, she's got a wonderful sense of humor and usually just laughs and shakes her head. "I don't know where my head went," she'll tell us.

I don't mind telling the same story to her a bunch of times ... each time, she acts as interested as she was the first time, haha.

The best thing to do is try to take it in stride, with great love. You're probably still giving him joy, whether he knows it or not.

[cmotherofpirl]

Acknowledge its not fun to deal with him. Love him and treat him with the kindness you would expect to be treated. Listen to his stories, and ask him about the past, because he is still there. If you get impatient, offer it to God, and bite your tongue. We are not judged so much on how we treat our friends and the people we are comfortable with, but on how WE TREAT THE LEAST OF THESE. He still needs hugs and human contact. He also is at the point he doesn't have a choice whether he want to evaluated, he is incapable of making that decision. Call you local senior citizen aging center for advice.