Getting my husband with dementia to take a shower. It’s been 22 months since his last one! Any tips?

Kudos to his poor sister who is managing his care...she can't be all that young herself. 22 months without a shower... Yikes! People with dementia are not in control of their faculties. Not sure it's fair to say "he is an embarrassment to the whole family". He is sick. He should be in a facility that is trained to care for people with dementia. That care would include getting him to bathe and helping him with that. Can your son help his dad with finding a memory care facility close to where the two of you are?

Went through a similar thing with my mom and she was already in assisted living. Her response would always be "I just bathed". I finally told her that the shower heads were difficult for folks to use and they were receiving some complaints and they were now sending someone in twice a week to help people navigate the hand held shower heads. I told her it was about time they did something or they were going to be sued! My mom loves a little drama! LOL She fell for it and from that point on allowed someone to come in and help her bathe.

You are lucky to have your son to help you with your own issues. Now if he can just help his dad get the care he needs, I think you'll all be happier.

Take care.

First, I am sorry to hear that you're faced with this challenging situation.

At 82, your SIL is no spring chicken and I am concerned for her health & well-being as well. I would recommend that you have an in-depth conversation with your SIL and ask for her input on you setting up a regular caregiver to assist with bathing needs. After all, your husband is living in her home and she needs to be included in any plans to bring people/helpers into her home.

Explain to your husband that he will be getting a "helper" soon to come in a few times a week (or few hours a week - depending on what you can afford) to assist with his showering, laundry, and other light housekeeping. Ask your husband if he prefers a male or female to help him in the shower.

Based on your budget, I would recommend services at least 3 times a week. It is important to keep up his hygiene to avoid infections such as a UTI.

My husband is 82 has dementia and is still capable of taking a shower… I don’t know if it’s his age, how he was brought up but he insists on just once a week. The rest of the time he uses butt wipes and sprays his whole body with deodorant. He says he only bathed once a week when he was growing up Lol
by the way he does smell because he wears the same clothes for a week, says they are cozy ,hangs his underwear up in the closet but I sneak them out and replace with clean… I am 66 and work full time, great health but very frustrating to encourage better hygiene. I just let it go cause he still is showering once a week.

My mom has dementia and that affects memory, behavior and ability to smell. Mostly, my mom's memory is still there, just her willingness to do anything responsible has dwindled. Yes, in her case it includes showering and even worse, going to the bathroom to urinate or poo. She uses the pull ups for that but then seems she's only changing them once a day. This will be her FOURTH move in under two years.. I have her finally accepting assisted living but once she gets there, im expecting she will deny care, the place will smell bad again and they will kick her out of that setting too.

If he has dementia he probably is convinced he has done it.

Can you afford to hire a bath aid? A big, trained bath aid can usually perform miracles when family is stumped.

They can make sure that all the safety features are in place and make him feel safe.

I would hire a cleaner to come deal with the bedroom while he is being showered.

Repeat every week to help keep things under control.

My, his sister is an amazing woman for taking him in and putting up with the trials of dementia. God bless her.

Are you guys being helped by an attorney for conservatorship? He may need guardianship too. Because you want to make sure he gets full authority over his person and his finances, this will ensure the ability to get him the care he needs and an attorney can help keep you from becoming destitute from his care costs.

Best of luck getting a bath aid and the conservatorship/guardianship taken care of.

This must be so difficult for everyone, great big warm hug!

plockwood4: Since he is adamant about not listening to you, social services should be employed/utilized. Refusing to bathe or shower is very common among elders. While a patient myself at the ER one day, I witnessed a gentleman, whose 'malady' (of course, not an emergent issue) when questioned by the nurse as to why he had called 9-1-1, his response was "I need to take a shower." This patient was rather brusque, also. I did understand his plight, but taking up valuable time and resources of medical professionals in a hospital setting was naturally flawed.

It seems he is not fit to be living on his own even at his sister's. Is his sister having trouble putting up with this?

We finally purchased a walk-in tub. We figured the cost would work out in the additional months of home care we are able to provide this way. It took some gradual steps to get there, but now it has solved the problem. I stay with my husband or nearby, there are a couple of candles and music, he enjoys the water jets. The best part is I can stand to help him wash, and he is safely seated in the tub. A lot of conversation helps, and I find it works better if I tell him, not ask him, when it's time, with a healthy lead-up, rewards like out for lunch after, or company coming over.

He needs to be in a memory care facility. To let him manipulate you in these ways indicates that the family is not able to properly care for him. Good luck.

When my parents weren't bathing because they thought they had. I hired home health to come help them. They accepted their help better than mine.
He isn't doing this on purpose. He doesn't have the cognitive ability anymore. He thinks he has and can't remember that he hasn't. It could be helpful to you to find a seminar on caring for someone with Alzheimer's. I wish I had known what I know now when I was caring for my parents. It would have made it much easier. The option is not always to put them in a facility. You can search online for information on caring for someone with Alzheimer's. He may not even remember how to take a shower and need some prompting. Check into your local area agency on aging for respite services and you may be able to get someone to come in and help her out.

My resolution, is not without a bit of a struggle.

My husband is a broken record referring everything he hears, or is asked, to his happy memories of his service in the Navy. And he also detests showers.

I turn on the shower to warm it up. I let him know, every other day, that it's time for a shower. Griping all the way, in his I-better-watch-out voice, he tells me how ridiculous this is, it's stupid, and I can be sure this is the last time. This has been going on for over a year. I've reminded him how he loves how he feels afterwards, how sparkly he looks and most importantly that it takes less than 10 minutes.

My latest tactic has been to repeat the same set of questions about the showers in the Navy. Did he have a private shower or did he share a big shower room. Did the Navy provide soap, was there a schedule, etc. In between gripes he answers me like I'm the biggest idiot and sh*t and he sends daggers with his eyes, but he's distracted and washes what I direct him to wash in between questions.

Our process - I'm ready with some shampoo in my left hand and tell him to close his eyes because I'm going to wet his head, and then I pat the right amount of shampoo on to the top of his head. I tell him to work the shampoo. He's shooting his mouth off but he's doing it. In the meantime I wet a wash cloth in warm water in the sink and pump liquid 3-in-1 soap on to it. I hand it to him and tell him to wash his face.

Often I take the sprayer off its holder to help him rinse off. I rinse out the wash cloth at the sink and repeat the routine down to his ankles. He needs to hear a caring voice especially when he's disturbed, I'm not feeling it but it's necessary, so I ask if the temperture is comfortable although I know it is, and I know that everything in the dang world to him is too this, and too that, and everything particularly when he's riled is physically uncomfortable. After he washes his face, I say, oh boy my favorite part, I love to wash your big strong back, man it's like washing a drive-in movie screen so big. He's not a big man and has dwindle down to a little young teenager in stature but he doesn't say a word when I say that. He is humbly maveling at the compliment. To his mind it's true and a largess to permit me to wash his back. It works for 3 seconds.

As long as I can I'm going to keep him involved with washing himself, handing him soaped up wash clothes and rinsing them until that time that I may have to do the entire job. For now I supervise. Lately though I've begun to wash his feet because he won't/can't. His bottom is often washed a couple of times, unless he allows, begrudgingly, my intrusion during his toileting to remind him to use a butt wipe after using T.P. This helps that part of the showering from being a major show stopper.

It's a gigantic pain to help him but even more so to deal with his mouth, vocalized resistance, and threats. I don't know how long it will continue to be only this difficult. Btw, I do his pedicure. He likes that.

When the time comes I'm going to get a man to do the job if my sweetheart completely shuts down. Maybe a sumo. I'm sure he's not going to give him grief.

Time to get him to a doctor. Have a psych evaluation. Maybe you can do it by Tele conference online like zoom bc of covid and being infermed. He needs help.
What if they said we are no longer allowing this in our home. Take soap, water washcloth in and bathe him. He is acting like a 4 yr old, having a tantrum. They could withhold tv, food until he washes if he can walk. Make him come out to meals. Give food after he bathes. Shut off the tv until he does. Stop catering to him. They are, and he doesn't have to change his ways. They need to stop that. If someone stunk up my house, I'd have them removed if they didn't change. Time to find out where they can put him. Everyone in life has to do something they don't like. Why is he allowed to wallow in his filth? They are being push overs

Might be worth hiring a person from home health agency to come in daily and help him to bathe, wash hair, trim beard....

Have you notified social services or country senior social services. You need state or county support. It sounds like he needs to be in a locked facility. Certainly, not at home.
* Stop coming to his aid.
* As long as you continue to be a 'co-dependent, the behavior will continue.
* He may need be picked up by police authorities before something can be done. If he is picked up, he will hopefully get a psychological evaluation.
* You must stop supporting his behavior if you want anything to change. Check into SSI for him. He needs much more help than you can provide.
HOW DO YOU RESOLVE IT?
Call authorities. Do not continue to support this behavior.

This is so common with people who have dementia. My mom would never take another shower if we didn't make her do it. Sometimes she does it willingly, but other times she screams "I hate you," or says she took one that morning when we know she did not because she NEVER remembers how to turn on the showerhead. Promising to take her out to dinner works best for us.
If there is something he enjoys, take it away unless he complies. Some people might disagree with that, but whatever it takes. I write on her calendar when she takes a shower, so I can show her how long it has been.

My response is to the couple's son:

I understand that the writer's husband has significant problems with ADLs (Activities of Daily Living) that, per her report, have been going on much too long. And, yes, there are solutions that range from total care nursing -> to in home health -> to ensuring the shower is safe and installing a shower chair -> to opting for a sponge bath.

All that said, those ideas are available to family from appropriately trained medical staff which this man desperately needs. It also strikes me that a simple computer search (and the writer has computer skills to send in this question) would also yield answers.

What I keyed in on in here is the anger, hostility, and clear lack of understanding of a medical condition. Writing "He’s quite an embarrassment to the whole family. He’s manipulative, a liar, unwilling to pickup after himself and refuses to acknowledge he’s done anything wrong when confronted" is neither an accurate assessment of the husband's disorder nor conducive to a healthy environment to ensure his care.

I think, sometimes, we don't realize that both parents are susceptible to cognitive decline and dementia - especially when one may be diagnosed or progressing more quickly than the other. Obviously, the wife acknowledged that she needs supported care. It is critical that the family step in to ensure BOTH parents have appropriate medical assessment and supportive care. It is possible that they neef to be kept apart from each other for the betterment of both of them if one is targeting the other in this kind of way.

Dementia patients are sometimes afraid of the running water, the sound of it, the way their skin feels when water touches it. Often they’ve lost all sense of what water is or does. My mother was afraid to brush her teeth because she had no idea what a toothbrush was and thought it was trying to harm her. Any kind of reasoning with such a patient is useless. Just tossing this into the discussion because people tend to believe dementia patients still have the same norms and thought processes as we do. They don’t. They’re in a different world.

After 22 months just take him to the front yard and hose him down like he was a Golden Retriever.

I'm only partially joking...

Perhaps we assume wrongly that there is no alternative to showers?

I’ve been reading about hygiene in Elizabethan England. Warm showers were impossible for around 1500 years after the Romans left. Baths were difficult but not impossible.

Carting the water, heating it up, pouring it into a bath, then emptying the bath, was not easy unless you had servants to do it for you. Add to that, the water was often polluted, and people believed that infections could enter the body through the pores and body orifices.

Instead middle and upper class people used ‘rubbers’, which were linen cloths that were warmed (by servants) and rubbed over the body to remove the sweat so that it didn’t go stale and smelly. It was done at least once a day, and was done to clean the hair, too. It was also normal to have a clean linen shirt every day. They ‘washed’ in linen, not water! Being smelly was a social disaster, not so different from now.

We have a Covid poster for desert people about ‘washing’ their hands in sand, with pictures on how to do it thoroughly. DH says he did that himself when he was honorary mechanic on a school trip to the outback and got grease all over his hands. Soap and water isn’t the only way.

Smell is an odd sense. When you smell something new, you notice it. However, after 5 minutes (or less or more), you no longer notice the different smell. In addition, some odors smell different to different people.

So now we get into body odors. Your body is always with you, therefore, as the odor changes to something nasty, it is highly possible that the person never notices it or blames it on the clothes. My Mom could not smell her own spilled urine, however, she could really smell someone else's.

It is really hard to get someone to take a bath, especially if they have no interest in being presentable to others. My only suggestion would be to get his doctor or someone that he respects, to tell him that he needs to bathe daily or every other day or weekly.

Because my Mom was occasionally incontinent, she urinated on herself and occasionally got her clothes wet. I could tell because I could smell the urine. So she decided that she would just use a perfume to cover it up. It didn't help that she wore the same dirty clothes over and over. She would smell the clothes and if they didn't smell horrible to her, she would wear them again.

I talked to her doctor. I don't know what the doctor said to her, however, he told me that at least once a week, I needed to step in and help give her a thorough cleaning. After that visit, at 8 pm every night, my Mom took a bath. Every Saturday, I gave her a thorough cleaning including her hair. Regarding the clothes? When she was bathing, I used to substitute clean clothes for the ones she selected to wear. I would then put the "dirty" clothes in an area where she didn't look or put them directly into the washer. I couldn't leave the dirty clothes in the hamper because she would go through the hamper and pull out clothes to wear.

That was the beginning of the end of the "gagging" body odor smells.

While the conservatorship & other paperwork is being worked out, are there funds for his Sister to employ a home care agency aide? 2-3 times a week would give routine.

Introduce the Helper, for light housekeeping & laundry etc. Then helping change clothes to be washed, then bathing assistance is added in.

Showering is such a common battle! Even the best experienced aides sometimes can't get it done. But it does get done in rehab & MC as others point out. Seen it so many times myself too.

Refuse refuse refuse for family. But will give in for staff.

I have POA but my son is in the process of getting conservatorship over him as we speak. Till then, I was hoping for ideas to at least getting him cleaned up for the painful, transition for him and us into memory care.

I have POA but my son is in the process of getting conservatorship over him as we speak. Till then, I was hoping for ideas to at least getting him cleaned up for the painful, transition for him and us into memory care.

Obviously, your husband can't be cared at home anymore. He needs professional nursing care.

There are people that have been trained to help with showers and dressing.
An agency would be able to send the right person. It might take a visit or two before he would cooperate.
The other option since you are his wife and he has been diagnosed with dementia you could place him in a Memory Care facility and he would be cared for by trained staff.
The question is since he would be placed in a MC facility would you rather have him near you or near his sister.
Since there is a distance has his sister been made POA? if so she would be the one that would place him. Although as spouse your input should be considered.

Whoever has POA for your husband needs to have him placed in a care facility.