Mother's difficult move

marthag76

Hello, everyone.  I'm new to this site, my Mother was diagnosed with ALZ about two years ago.  She has her ups and downs with alz,  it has been manageable, until recently.  She had been living on her own until my sisters and I decided it would no longer be safe. 

She moved with one of my sisters about 30 minutes away from her current home. It has been three months since her move and things are now very difficult. She now calls her brothers and other family members claiming my sisters and I have her hostage and will not let her go home, they believe her.  She's also now delusional some days, claiming she sees family members, who are not around, stealing money from her purse and taking her credit cards.  She's also telling family members we have her money and don't give her a cent.  She wants us to close her bank account and give her all the cash to keep in her room.  I put cash in her purse every few days to keep her content, but sometimes her purse is empty the next day.  Do people with ALZ hide their belongings, like cash?  And don't remember where they put them?

My question is to anyone who has dealt with this, how do my sisters and I react? Does anyone have advice? My sisters and I are so heartbroken when our Mother tells us horrible things about us.  She was always the sweetest lady, never anything bad to say.  But now she has flashes where she could be the meanest person with her words.  Then perfectly normal the next day.  What can we do? We're so tired of crying daily with hurtful things she says.  Thank you for any advice.  

Emily 123

Hi Martha,

Yes, these can be typical behaviors. Moving a person with AD into a new environment removes all the familiarity from their day.  Because they rely on familiarity and a routine a move can be  tremendously disorienting to them- as the disease progresses the loss of short term memory along with the other functions that part of the brain controls makes it very difficult to retain and process new information. Logic, reasoning, empathy, a sense of time and other abilities are affected. Your mother will try to come up with something that makes sense to her. It may go like this:

Mom wakes up in an unfamiliar room.  You are there, so she assumes she is visiting. She wants to go home. You tell her she can’t. Her anosognosia, a lovely part of AD that keeps her from realising the depth of her issues, makes her think there’s no reason she shouldn’t be home. There will be no retention of any past conversations regarding why she’s ‘visiting’.  Because she can’t retain a thought past a few minutes and her reasoning is affected it makes sense to her that you are holding her against her will. Additionally, she’s hiding her money, then can’t remember where, or even that you just gave her some. So she’ll ask for more. Take a look through the threads here- you are not alone & you will see good advice.  

Because of her diminished capacity and her anosognosia it will be little use to try to use past conversations as a reference or reason with her. Assume she has no recall.  Sometimes it’s easier to create a fiblet (You’re visiting for the holidays! You’re here because your roof was leaking.  The car’s in the shop!) rather than upset her by getting into an argument ( “I want to go home”. ..”You can’t go home”).

Do read & share this and forum threads with family- it helps:      

http://www.dementiacarestrategies.com/12_pt_Understanding_the_Dementia_Experience.pdf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5QMeQpkPhA

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cZTgG6kDjs

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjGEexyagRk

Rescue mom

Sorry, I can’t be here long but had to say something…yes, yes, yes! People with dementia/Alzheimer’s absolutely do hide and forget  things like money. And they throw them away, too.  It’s very common, someone here just dealt with a valuable ring being lost.

Don’t give her more money than you can afford to lose. Assume it will be lost. And you should collect any other valuables that would be bad to lose. Sometimes you can “replace” them with fakes money/ expired cards/ invalid cards, etc. (you can buy fake money online, or make it,  don’t try to use it).

Let any family who believes her, come and keep her for a couple days. It’s so hard to deal with that, you eventually grow a thick skin. But critics who have not been in your shoes, have no room to talk.

Others will have better advice, sometimes it takes a couple days.

The "other" one

Absolutely invite the siblings over to see for themselves.  Explain the situation, hope they get onboard, but realize that siblings sometimes don't want to hear an alz diagnosis- then move on.  

My mother obsessed about money before her dementia, it got a lot worse as her memory faded. Her eyesight is very poor, so providing her with expired AAA cards and the like worked.  I would give her enough cash for the newspaper she wanted to buy, had no opportunity to buy one, and the money was always gone. Almost anything I brought to her would be gone- decorations (she didn't recognize them and assumed they weren't hers), multiple  pairs of eye glasses( until the optometrist finally suggested the dollar store readers), new clothes, you name it. Sometimes I was lucky enough to find them in the trash.  At first I blamed the other residents at the nursing home, but I figured it out quickly.  

As far as the hurtful things she says- you just have to get past it.  I fought it for awhile, but soon realized she really only said terrible things when she was either terribly frustrated or scared.  It took me awhile to realize the terror she was probably experiencing as her mind was no longer working as well as it had, she was somewhat aware of it.  It must be humiliating, frustrating and frightening.  See if you can figure out when she's being hurtful and see if there is a trigger.  You may not be able to do anything about it, but you might be able to redirect and/or provided comfort of reassurance.  Or, at the least, you can manage your own reaction.  

You're not alone.