My Father and the Same Stories Repeated

Carol Berry Nellis

I grew up with grandparents telling stories.  They were all funny and gave me a sense of history and the love in the family.  My Dad was diagnosed with Dementia in February.  He has short-term memory loss and forgets words - gets confused.  He's 20/30 on the scale.  My Dad is also very ... self-focused.  He tells stories about how poorly he's been treated - over and over again.  He can tell the same story repeatedly in the same day.  Somebody will trigger that memory and it's like a dam-gate opens and the story just spills out.  And I've tried to close that gate - "Dad, we've heard that story." "Dad, please don't tell that story again."  I've had conversations with him where I've waited until all was quiet and I said, "I want to talk to you about the story you told.  It was inappropriate and I don't want you to tell it again."  (That particular story centers around his experience in the 40s and 50s with racism in North Carolina and then in Oklahoma.  Yes, he used the word.)  He'll tell one story that leads into another story - i.e.  the "My StepMom whipped me for wetting the bed" will lead into the "My Grandma wanted to take me to the Sheriff" which will lead to the "She apologized to me" story.  He will tell the bed-wetting story to get sympathy but he draws my Brother into it - stating that HE had the issue too - he'll tell this story to my Brother's friends or in-laws.  

I love my Dad.  I do.  I've tried to re-route a story - tried to ask him to talk about something he experienced - "Where were you when Kennedy was assassinated" or route him to a funny story the "George threw Ralph's (false) Teeth out of the car" story.  I have his temper - I have his short attention span - I have his short fuse.  How do I successfully cut off an inappropriate story without causing him to be embarrassed or hurt?  

towhee

Carol, you asked how you can cut off an inappropriate story once it has started without causing your father to be embarrassed. Short of saying something like "There is a car wreck happening outside!!" or something with similar emotional impact, that is very difficult. Persons with dementia get caught in that "loop" or "cycle". You have to either avoid the trigger and stop it before it starts or catch that point when one cycle is finished and redirect before another starts. Inappropriate behavior is one reason people with dementia lose their social network. Some caregivers carry cards saying "This person has dementia, please be understanding" and hand them out if necessary.

Persons with dementia will start to lose their ability to empathize (they become self centered). They will also lose their social filters and become unable to judge what stories or words are appropriate for their audience. When they are still able to carry on conversations with no problem the fact that their short term memory is fading is not as obvious, which gives us the expectation that they can remember our instructions from several hours or days previously. They can't. No matter how many times we tell them. It just makes us frustrated and them feel bad, or angry.

General advice here is to read a short article available free online called "Understanding the Dementia Experience" by Jennifer Ghent Fuller. You might also check out some You tube videos by Teepa Snow, she does very good portrayals of people with dementia and lets you see that it is not just your father. 

If you are going to be involved at all in your fathers care it would be a good idea to try to learn more about dementia. Also extremely important is to start setting up your support team while your father is still in the early stages. Friends, support groups, counselor, doctor, all for you, and care options, daycare, caregivers, etc. for your father.

Wish you well-

harshedbuzz

Hi and welcome. I am glad you found us though sorry for your need to be here. 

Some thoughts. 

This is a fabulous group of warm and caring individuals but if you are posting under your actually name, you may wish to change it in the interest of protecting yourself and your family.

The loss of empathy and resultant self-centeredness is very common among PWD. It's all about them- all of the time. This trait, along with the losses of social filter and executive function caused by the progressive damage to the brain, can make being out in the world a little dicey at times. 

The repeated verbatim scripts thing was also something my dad did. Many of his stories were conflated. Conflation is when a person recalls the gist of an event but can't recall the details and backfills them with random people, places and things. My dad often conflated stories about his worthless sister and my deadbeat sister into things I had done which felt very like he was rewriting history in an attempt to make their behavior less ghastly. Once I understood this, I was able to roll with it but the first time I heard the story about him having to pick my kids up from a barroom floor in the middle of the night because I'd snuck out to have sex with some rando I was livid. 

Some of dad's tales were, like your dad's, NSFW. In fact, dad's story telling could have resulted in jailtime, so we pretty much kept him in lockdown until that phase passed. He was similar to your dad in that all stories had an attention-seeking theme. His world got pretty small for a time. That's the thing about dementia- it's always progressing so that the ugliest of phases will eventually past and be replaced with new challenges.

As the disease and his short term memory became more of an issue, the stories became less believable and redirection became easier. At some point a complete 180 redirection- like towhee's car wreck"- became easier and effective. Many people find redirection with a sweet treat especially effective. Below is the essay towhee referenced.

HB



12 pt Understanding the Dementia Experience (dementiacarestrategies.com)

Cynbar

As others have said, you really can't stop him from telling the inappropriate stories. In fact, this requires a major adjustment in how you deal with him on everything. His ability to process and reason is going fast. A lot of people think dementia is just about memory loss but it is so much more ----lack of ability to empathize, read social cues, filter their thoughts. Things do seem to get stuck on a permanent loop, and it can drive caregivers and family crazy. If you can't handle it, you may need to walk away. And feel free to explain the situation to others who may be offended, it's likely they'll take it a whole lot better if they understand where he is coming from. If it's any comfort, this phase does pass. Once you get used to the fact that reasoning with him is futile, your frustration level should go down too. Good luck, this isn't an easy journey by any means.

Lor2014

Redirection is the only option. It's not their fault that they can't remember that they told you the story a million times. 

My mother will tell me the same thing 5 times in 3 minutes, ask the same question 20 times in 15 minutes. It's part of dementia. The only thing you have control over is your response. Their memory is GONE. The serenity prayer may be helpful.

If they say, "the sky is purple," your response can be, "and a nice shade of purple, yes?" The dementia patient's reality IS their reality. Trying to convince the dementia patient that the sky is blue is only going to frustrate you more. It's your choice on accepting or rejecting that dementia is a disease that the patient cannot change.

MsReliable

Wonderful answer. My dad has 2 stories in his loop now - one based in reality, the other probably a 'backfill' as a way of telling me he doesn't like PT -which he doesn't. Sometimes redirection works, sometimes not.

We were always a truth-telling family; learning to tell white fiblets was hard. I have learned to remind myself that it's not him talking, it's the dementia, and I let it go. One important lesson I learned is that, at least for my dad, silence is a good way to break the loop. But it was a hard lesson to learn.

Ice cream is also a great redirector around here....

Carol Berry Nellis

Unfortunately, I didn't know that there was a need to create anonymity when I was creating my login. I'll check with Admin on changing my profile.  The login name is not something I can change.  Thank you, though, for pointing that out.  

I will definitely check out the suggested article and youtube videos.  I'll also share with my siblings.  MsReliable, My Dad LOVES ice cream.  I will try that redirection (but not too often - don't want him gaining lots of weight.)  

All, thank you so much for the responses.  

Marta

Any time you post on a public forum you leave yourself open to information miners, and your loved one, too.  Scammers are everywhere.

David J

In the late ‘50s, my maternal grandparents moved back to town (midstate NY) from Michigan. Pop had retired, and he and Nan-Nan came home to where their children still lived. I didn’t know at the time, but my grandmother was experiencing dementia. As a child, I didn’t recognize the signs, but I remember her stories. I remember telling her about my new bicycle, which was red. “They used to call me Red, because I had bright red hair…” followed by a captivating conversation with my grandmother about her early life. I still treasure that experience, 60+ years later. I found out many years later that this “They used to call me Red” story was a repeat for Nan-Nan, and everybody else was tired of it. I found it fascinating. 

So the stories may be repeats, and boring as hell, but they are still important. Important to the teller and important to the person hearing it for the first time. Particularly if that person is a child.