Hi everyone. New to this site! Glad to have found some potential support! My dad with fairly advanced Dementia is in a nursing home and VERY unhappy. He tells us his family has abandoned him and no one comes to visit. Yet, every day someone is in there visiting him, sometimes multiple people per day! He seems to forget that people visit him. What is the best way to handle this? It breaks my heart really. He wants to go home, but he can't be cared for at home and I've tried to explain that to him but as you can imagine, he doesn't really process it. Would love any feedback or thoughts.
Regards,
Margaret
Dementia sucks.
Sadly, there's not a lot you CAN do. Their memories are as fleeting as a summer storm. Daddy would be very engaging while I was THERE and I could go back the very next day and he didn't remember a thing. He seemed a little baffled by it, and at time was teary or frustrated-- and all we could do was try to divert him from "remembering" to something happening "now". He loved the Nat'l Geo Channel and we'd turn that on. The programs settled his brain a lot. So much he had lost--this brilliant mind--and heart breaking to see.
If he didn't want to, we didn't try to remind him of all he had "forgotten". We just went FORWARD and didn't dwell on the past, as his memories of the past were gone, for the most part.
If he became agitated about the memory loss--we did start using Valium cream rubbed into the thin skin of his forearms. This settled him down well. (By this point he was in Hospice, but I am sure his doc would have been OK with it sooner). And if I rubbed the remaining cream into my hands (as you do when you lotion someone else-) I'd have a pretty peaceful afternoon too!
I consider myself lucky in that he remembered me to the last day of his life--some of my other sibs--not so much. That's precious to me.
Your DH may seem unfeeling to you, but he's actually being "smart". Very few people here would encourage you to further upset him by bringing him to a
'new norm'.
This is your DH's father, not yours.
Perhaps a geriatric psych work and some meds to help him cope with the depression/anxiety. They aren't miracle cures and may not even be right for this situation, but a baseline evaluation never hurts.
It also is likely VERY HARD for your DH to deal with his dad's decline. I know my Dh has never accepted his dad's death--still thinks maybe we should have explored more kinds of TXes. This is HIS problem to deal with--and he has to find a way to wrap his brain around it. ( And dad has been gone almost 15 years).