Non-sensical sentences.

LeBret

How do you respond when your EO spouse comes up with a series of sentences that are unrelated and make no sense whatsoever? I know why it happens, and I know she's trying to communicate something, but I'm frequently unable to come-up with any kind of response. She is becoming increasingly incoherent over time.

SusanB-dil

Hi LeBret - 

I'm sure others would be more helpful, but what i remember of my grandmother when i was younger, was more or less nodding yes or no, and distracting. I think we tried asking questions, at least at first.  such as - if it was near lunch or dinner, would ask if hungry, or if she was looking around, we would tell her that grandpa was in the other room.  

mommyandme (m&m)

“Word Salad”… oh joy…

I find communication is one of the most frustrating parts of this disease. She can’t understand me and visa versa.  I do a lot of validation.  Knowing her helps of course, but really it’s just about words. I can tell when an affirmative answer is wrong by her “response”. 

I say a lot of yes and no or “that’s hard, I know”, “that’s good or bad” or “it’ll be ok”. And her answers are not usually responding to what I’ve actually said or meant.  

Time and patience helps me but ugh! I feel your pain. 

Neverends

Hi Lebret. With my mother I usually try to notice the tone and her body language when she is saying things that make absolutely  no sense. If she is calm I usually say " sounds good, ok, your right".  If she seems anxious I check to see if she needs changed , toileted, hungry, thirsty or pain, or maybe needs reassurance  that everything is OK.  Hope that helps some.

ButterflyWings

Same here. I have a lot of stock phrases basically acknowledging that I heard him, since my DH is trying to communicate. But lots of times who knows what he really is intending to convey. 

Even when the sentences are grammatically correct, they often aren't connected to reality so I just go with "is that right", "wow", "that's interesting", "huh!", and even "I'm not sure" if my first response doesn't suffice. We are still at the stage where sometimes he's quite clear about his intent to go and do, including visiting long dead relatives and I try to redirect him immediately with something like "they said wait til tomorrow", or "we'll go after dinner", "soon", etc. Then he forgets, so rinse and repeat is no problem to just reuse the things that worked before.

I wonder if it is as frustrating to him as we imagine it would be. He doesn't seem to be bothered much, really. Not sure what that means! Wishing you well with this stage. They all are hard.

Vitruvius

I go through this all day. DW has Semantic Dementia (SD) in which conversation is characterized as being grammatically correct but “strikingly without content”. In most of what she says the tone indicates she expects a response and will press for one if I don’t provide one, or the expected one.  SD patients also have fairly good episodic memory so it’s difficult to give a distracting answer. So basically no help from me just commiseration. 

LeBret

Thanks to all of you. I guess we're all mostly in the same creaky, sinking, hellish boat, headed toward the same destination. Probably, conversation and wit [well, we thought we were witty] was pretty much the foundation of our relationship. Without the words and the wisecracks, we are both a little lost and desperate ... trying to climb over a wall that can't be scaled. We don't really recognize each other any more. But we do our best, as I see all of you do too. One day at a time, good days and bad. Thanks for the insights.

GothicGremlin

We do the word salad daily as well. I do a lot of what m&m does - validate mostly. If it looks like she might get upset, I try to redirect. "Hey, have you seen X today?" "Did you guys do karaoke today?"

My sister has primary progressive aphasia on top of the Alzheimer's so not only do I get word salad, I also get sentences with no nouns in them. I've gotten really good at free association.  She knows she has Alzheimer's so at least we have that, and I can use humor with her and it usually works.  When she's trying to come up with a word and can't find it, I'll start with "is it bigger than a bread box?" So far it always has gotten a laugh, which reduces stress, which sometimes helps with the word finding.

We do what we can.

clkspace

One thing I have found NOT to do is to pause and attempt to study what my DW says.  When I do, she jumps to the conclusion that I disapprove of whatever is going on in her head.  I find it is better to just reply with a simple platitude and not try too hard to figure her out.

This is certainly a touch area for me.