OCD

vallan · May 29

Is OCD a symptom of dementia?

My DH can spot a crumb on the floor 20 feet away and have to pick it up.

We walk several miles every morning and he has to pick up every single little thing in the street and put it in a bag for trash – – yes, that includes leaves.

He will vacuum up seeds that have fallen from a plant and plant them.

My thought is that even though this drives me crazy, it makes him happy so I go along with it.

Chance Rider · May 29

@vallan I definitely see behaviors with my husband that I attribute to his ALZ.

When returning grocery carts to the “cart corrals” the carts have to be “just-so”. My husband will rearrange the carts to his liking. Also, we live rurally and have to drive our garbage cans to our main road pickup spot. Again, he needs to make sure all the cans are aligned.

LOL I wish he’d vacuum up things in the house but those items aren’t on his radar. Such a strange disease.

blacksparky · May 29

My DW was OCD with folding the laundry. Shirts folded with no wrinkles, socks sorted and folded not bunched up and bed sheets perfectly folded including the fitted sheets. She no longer is fixated on these and as you might imagine I now fold ( if you want to call it folding) 🤔

terei · May 30

The brain is being affected/destroyed and anything ‘off’ that they are saying or doing is as a result of that. No behaviors with dementia would surprise me.

notequipped · May 30

I just watched a video on YouTube with a gentleman whose wife had early onset. (Tray & Theresa Pippen). In the description for the backyard chat video, he specifically mentions his wife spending a great deal of time looking down and picking things up - leaves, pebbles, feathers, plucking carpet fibers, etc. Apparently she would even try to pick up bird poop. On the DBAT, I wonder if that’s what they mean by the hunting/gathering stage? Having said that, my mom has developed several fixations that are not of the gathering type.

PalmReader · May 30

My DH does the same thing! He is constantly using the dust buster to pick up any little crumb on the floor, arranging the shoes just so, if anything is out of place on the counter he is fixing it, he lines up the silverware in the drawer, weeds every flower bed meticulously, sweeps the driveway and the street in front of our house (we have a leaf blower but he prefers the broom), and has to remove every leaf, twig, etc on our patio. In some ways it's great, because our lawn looks amazing and our floors are so clean, but he is often late for dinner or outings because he has to pick things up or organize. Interesting behavior…

JRB100 · May 30

https://alzconnected.org/discussion/76168/ocd

My wife does the same thing. I let it go now (after reading "Let Them Theory"). Afternoons are especially prone for this behavior. (My wife is early stage Alz, Vascular dementia, and PTSD traumatic bereavement.)

White Crane · May 30

The nurses and aides at my DH MC have asked me if he has always been so obsessed with any little thing being on the floor. No. It has only been since the Alzheimer's. He gets upset if there is a speck of anything on the floor and either picks it up himself or points it out to the aides. He won't rest until it is picked up.

SDianeL · May 31

All forms of OCD are exhibited in dementia. My husband was obsessed with the trash. He fell out of his wheelchair in MC while trying to pick up something from the floor.

annie51 · June 1

I definitely saw some OCD with my DH, including picking up every little speck on the floor like many of you have reported. Also towels on a rack had to be exactly centered, placemats had to be lined up with the lines in the table, etc, etc. I learned to live with it and it did eventually pass.

OCD

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