Aggression and apathy

CourtneyEdgar

My grandmother is in an assisted living/nursing home. She has Alzheimer’s disease. She becomes physically aggressive with staff and scratches, hits, kicks, and tries to bite them. This is happening more often, which I believe is from the Alzheimer’s. Lately, my grandmother will just lay in her bed and pretend to sleep. She seems apathetic and will not engage with anyone when she does this. She is awake and will mess with her hair/scratch her head, but still pretends to sleep. Is this something that can happen with Alzheimer’s?

SusanB-dil

Hi CourtneyEdgar - welcome to 'here' but sorry for the reason

MIL hasn't pretended to be sleeping, but will just pretend we aren't there. At all! If we ask if she would like something to eat at any regular eating times, sometimes we ask again, and she gets totally miffed. We often get 'I HEARD you!' Yes, we do realize she heard us...

You do need to tell her doc of the aggression, however. Asap. That level of aggression is not acceptable for anyone. I'm a little surprised that has not been addressed already. If it is just assisted living, they may not put up with it for much longer.

CourtneyEdgar

https://alzconnected.org/discussion/comment/192463#Comment_192463

The doctors have been really good at continuing to adjust medications and are always informed of any aggressive outbursts. She is technically now in the nursing home side of things at the facility, but they still call it assisted living. When she entered it about a year and an half ago, she and my grandfather were in the assisted living side. My grandfather passed away about 3.5 months ago from Lewy-Body dementia and Parkinson’s.

harshedbuzz

Apathy develops fairly early on and can be really difficult for family who feel compelled to create moments of joy or keep their LO engaged in the very activities that led them to choose this particular MCF.

The tuning out behavior is more of a late-stage thing IME. I found my dad and my aunt both developed a kind of sensory integration issue where they needed to unplug from what was going on around them when it all got to be too much light, noise, people. Dad would often spend hours laying on his sofa with his eyes shut but not sleeping.

HB

DTSbuddy

Maybe the apathy, the tuning out, is a rational response to the inability to understand where he is, who I am, what he should be doing, etc etc. He asks me these questions over and over, despite his loss of most language skills. He does not understand or remember the answers. For a person who was a highly respected, confident administrator, it must be really depressing, to have a sense of the deficits he is suffering. He walked 3 miles at a normal pace with his sons when they came to visit a couple days ago. And now he does not want to walk downstairs to get breakfast. I'm trying to stay cheerful and positive and understanding, but this morning he refused to wash his hands after a BM, and got really angry at me for asking him (5 times) to do that. He stood by the toilet for 15 minutes holding a wad of paper, and would not throw in the toilet or wash his hands.. He called me unintelligible names, and with angry expressions shook his finger at me. I have left him in the bedroom, and hope he will have forgotten it all in a half hour. I almost started him on a med two weeks ago when he got really agitated, but I'm trying to stay with behavioral treatment.