His autonomy vs My helping

Dementia is difficult to live with for everyone.

Some forms of dementia are treatable so please have your loved one diagnosed following proper protocol. Lot's about this online.

This may continue as the disease progresses. Last night my DH, 78, diagnosed 2 years ago, now in Stage 5 going into Stage 6 didn't make it to the bathroom and wet his underwear. He got a clean pair and put them on over the wet pair. I tried to help him and he because agitated and angry yelling at me to leave him alone! I finally gave up and he got back in bed with both of them on. I didn't handle it well but don't know what I would have done differently. So I'm working on getting a urinal for him to use and pads for his underwear that we can change when it happens again. I'm also getting the bed ready for next stage which sadly will be incontinence. You can't reason with them so prevention is the best strategy. Only interfere to keep them safe. Easier said than done. Still not there and working on it after 2 years.

Oh, yeah, we're living this at our house... that fine line between "things they can still do" and "things they probably can't do but they don't know that yet". One day she can make a great fried egg, the next she can't figure out how to use the toaster. Five minutes after not being able to use the toaster, she wants to drive her car (that's a no).

I sometimes create things I think she can do on her own or find a part of a task she can do with low stakes if it gets messed up. She's decided she hates "killing things" by pulling weeds or trimming back stuff in the garden, but if I ask her to help pick up the walnuts ("so the squirrels can find them better") she will spend a good long time picking up every walnut one by one and putting them in buckets. She fills the birdfeeders. She couldn't figure out how to get the liquid laundry detergent out of the container and into the correct place in the washer, but she sorts all the socks and sometimes even remembers which ones are mine.

I haven't had good luck with putting labels on things, because she doesn't actually use clues/information in the environment to solve problems any more -- she just asks me, then disagrees. "We're out of cat food" means there are no more cans in the cabinet, but there are four cases of cans downstairs in the same place we've stored extra cat food for the past 20 years. I could put a tag on the shelf in the cabinet that says "find more cat food downstairs" but she'll still ask me to drop whatever I'm doing to tell her where the cat food is then go downstairs with her when she can't find it.

There's so much loss, on their part, and I try to have empathy for not being able to do things you could do before, or that you think you should be able to do and other people don't think you're doing correctly. And sometimes I'd rather just cook the fried egg for her rather than having to scrub the burned pan. But I've gotten pretty good at cleaning the burned pans. It probably wont' be much longer before she stops wanting to cook the egg herself and I'll have to do it for her anyway.

My DW continued to use the computer. and finally, I had to replace it. At first, she would pull all the wires; I think she thinks the light means it is on and she likes to turn things off at night. Then she also would press keys and eventually got the files mixed up. I ended up getting a new computer, Windows 11 and that was costly. But the bigger cost was that the technology had advance from what I had that it put me in a serious learning curve for which I never recovered. I am able to do what little I now do, so it is okay. But now her disease has progressed so that she is less combative about the computer, so now I lock the computer room at night. It is open during the day but at least I can monitor it more. The new computer programs have better support systems and without that support I could not have done it.😎