Reminding them they have dementia

JaVonneHarley

While my father is my mother's full-time caregiver, I assist him with medical and financial matters. I also visit for two weeks each month because I live in another state.

I accompanied my mother to her appointment with the Neurologist for diagnosis. She is not accepting that she has dementia and constantly says she's not crazy or stupid.

She is aggressive toward my father and believes he is up to something with finances and/or has given someone else access to their bank and credit cards. She has paranoid delusions of the latter and that someone is coming into the house, bringing items in, and taking them out. She is actually the one moving things and hiding them. To this, she says, "I'm not crazy or stupid," and thinks my father is telling us so.

How do I remind her that she has dementia and that these things are not happening? I have tried many conversations. None of which include telling her she has dementia.

I also feel she needs another medication that her PC has prescribed to temper the paranoid delusions and aggression. However, she won't take them. She is currently taking memantine prescribed by the Neurologist. It took me over a month to convince her to take it.

Thank you in advance for any insight and assistance.

M1

Hi Javonne. It usually doesn't work to try to reason with her or remind her that she has dementia--it will only provoke anger and resistance. You may want to look up anosognosia--this is a feature of the disease in which the affected person cannot perceive their deficits, it's really different from denial, and most people with dementia have it.

You can become adept at little white lies and fiblets to work around her resistance. Tell her the medication is a vitamin or an anxiety pill, a muscle relaxer, a pain reliever, whatever you have to say. Or you may have to crush it, dissolve it, put in ice cream or pudding--or check with the doc, many meds come in liquid formuations that you can mix in drinks as well.

Emily 123

Hi JaVonne,

This was very helpful to me. It helped me start to deal with how the disease was affecting my mom's abilities.

https://www.smashwords.com/extreader/read/210580/2/understanding-the-dementia-experience/Medium,Arial,Black,White,One-and-a-Half

you'll have to scroll to the bottom of the page to start reading it. It was the first thing I found that laid out how the person now perceives things. Give it a read! Dig around in the forum here as well (there's a forum just for spouses/partners too, if your dad's interested) and there are some great videos on YouTube.

Your mom isn't able to recognize that she's having problems, or remember things she's seen, heard, or done for more than a few minutes at best, and she isn't able to process information the way she used to, so may jump to conclusions in an attempt to make sense of things. Sorry you're here, but glad if this can help you...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqmqC-702Yg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awBm4S9NwJ0