Dementia - toilet clogging in memory care

MNPS

My mom is in the later middle stages. Age 72. Started in assisted living but moved into memory care wing about 6 months ago. The day she moved in she clogged the toilet and she has done it almost every day since. She never did it before when she was in Assisted Living. The staff at the facility offers no ideas on how to deal with it and frankly act like she is annoying them. My thought is if you are in the memory care business you should have some ideas on what to do. When it gets reported to staff, it’s usually met with an eye roll and a “they’ll get to it when they get to it”. So she has a stinky clogged toilet sometimes for 24-36 even as long as 48 hours. We are considering moving her to a different facility over the lack of support on how we can deal with this. At the very least, they should be unclogging it within a few hours of it being reported. Or am I being unreasonable?

JeriLynn66

No, you are NOT being unreasonable: the facility is. I would speak to the DON if you haven’t. And, I would start looking for another facility. I’m sorry you’re dealing with this.

MNPS

What is the DON?

easy23

https://alzconnected.org/discussion/comment/193136#Comment_193136

It might be Director of Nursing

M1

It is director of nursing.

This is a tough one. You may do better to approach this as a joint problem solving session than as a complaint. And you may have to get into the nitty gritty here in terms of why this is a recurring problem. Is she overstuffing the toilet with toilet paper? In that case they may have to take the toilet paper away, or only leave a small amount available to her that has to frequently be replenished. No easy answer probably.

BassetHoundAnn

I think you should move her to a different facility. Toilet-clogging is a common problem in memory care and all staff should have a means to deal with it quickly and efficiently. At the current MC where my mom lives there is cleaning and maintenance staff there until late in the evening to handle such things, and aids have access to cleaning supplies and toilet plungers 24/7. Whenever I've brought a clogged toilet to someone's attention, no matter how late in the evening, it has been cleared and cleaned up ASP.

That wasn't the case at my mom's prior MC facility, and that was one of the reasons I moved her. In fact one time I drove home to get a plunger, snake, bucket, mops and rags to clean up her bathroom myself. The aids, who were all sitting on their phones in the common room, told me they couldn't clean up my mom's flooded bathroom because all the cleaning supplies were locked up. They said she could use a bathroom down the hall. No, she couldn't. She has dementia. When I phoned the MC's main number I got an out-of-state answering service that was no help.

There are many reasons for clogged and flooded toilets in MC. Wipes, which are often left in boxes by toilets, can clog up things badly. Sometimes, in order to flush toilets in MCs completely, one must hold down the handle for a spell. Residents often can't remember to do that. For a spell my mom was tossing all sorts of things down the toilet. Including food that was brought to her room that she didn't want to eat. MC residents must often be supervised in the bathroom. At some MC facilities they are not to the degree that they should be.

rhun1320

Gosh, your mom is young like my Dad. My Dad is 70. I'm only 34. So sorry you are going through this.