First time commenting

DeVonne

Hi My name is Vonnie.  I am taking care of my mother in law.  Lately she has be having both the TV and the radio both up quite loud at the same time.  Is this common?  The doctors say she has Alzheimer's and all of this is overwhelming.  It has been encouraging to read your comments and solutions.

Emily 123

Hi Vonnie,

My Mom seems to have days where she is more hard of hearing and she's much more 'foggy' on those days.  One time she did have wax in her ears, but usually they are clean, and she did confess to me that she knew her hearing was getting worse.  I googled it, and it does look like there may be a link between the two, but who knows?

How good is she with electronic things?  I bought my mom a voice amplifier from Amazon. It came with earbuds, but I also bought some cheap headphones as well. She didn't want a hearing aid, and she has a tremor so that one would be hard for her to use. Plus the amplifier's a bit bigger so I felt like she might see it and remember to use it more. 

She puts it on the living room table and then can turn up the volume on the amplifier rather than the TV.  When she's having her hard-of-hearing days I make her use it. At first she resisted, but it really helped her hear, and I explained to her that our conversations were much more pleasant for me when I didn't have to yell.

She has an iPad that can take a headphone jack as well, so a lot of times she plugs her headset into that and she uses the ipad to watch videos or listen to a music service like Pandora.  Does your radio have an outlet for a jack?

If your TV or radio could support wireless you could get her a wireless headset as well, but might have to help her set it up--however, the quiet might be worth it

Ledbets

When my mother did this it was because she didn’t know how to turn them down. She could use the remote, but would decide to change channels and hit volume instead. She didn’t know how to fix it so she just left it. It didn’t happen all the time, but when it got more often and she made other similar mistakes we realized.

DeVonne

I appreciate your reply.  She is not hard of hearing, in fact that's one thing that works pretty good on her!!  She likes Willie Nelson so she leaves the radio on the country station in case he comes on and then has the tv on low so she won't miss if Willie comes on.  She can run the remote but has trouble with more than the three or four channels we have for her.  I just thought maybe this was Alzhimer's related.

Cynbar

Yes, it's Alzheimers related. Her mind isn't working right, so things that seem odd to the rest of us seem reasonable to her.  Don't expect this or many other things to make sense, just go with it. If it is bothering other people, turn one of them off or get her earphones. I imagine you've thought of getting her tapes or whatever of just Willie Nelson? Alexa (if you have one) will play that or whatever she wants, on request, as much as she wants (as long as you buy the Amazon Music subscription for $3.99/month.) Pretty easy to use, also, but someone else can always activate it if necessary. Might stop the behavior if she knows she can hear him whenever she wants.

DeVonne

Thank you ; Yes I have tried to do pandora for her but then she gets tired of that and she can't understand the difference in the roku and the regular tv so that's a whole other battle.  She really gets exasperated with herself and I try to look at things with a sense of humor but sometimes she breaks down and cries and it just breaks my heart that she gets so confused.  Then she get upset and storms off then comes back a few minutes later crying some more and apologizes.  This stuff sure isn't for the weak!!!