What a hell-a-la-boo

I would be afraid she forgets the tour just like she forgot you told her about the pads. Even if she remembers his tactics still require her to reason through things. If I don’t wear depends and use the pads I may need to go to a facility. That’s a lot for her brain to work through. I doubt she will be able to do that. I also agree with sandwichone123. If the hope is to scare her a bit, what happens if you decide you can’t do it any more and she has to go to a facility? She probably won’t remember, but the negative feeling may remain. Yes, a home environment has people who love her caring for her, but it also has the couch you don’t want ruined, the stove she thinks she can still bake a cake in, the keepsake on display in the living room you don’t want thrown in the trash for who knows what reason and the cleaning product in the bathroom she might think is mouth wash (maybe not today, but possibly at some point). She doesn’t want you involved in her private hygiene decisions. What happens when it gets to the point that you need to help her put on the depends or even wipe? It honestly sounds like that might be where things are headed. I think in her mind she sees you as a daughter not a caregiver and she is fighting you. In a facility she may just give in to the caregivers. Even if she doesn’t, the caregiver is not going to get emotional, be filled with anxiety, and extremely stressed about the situation. They have seen it before. Please don’t take this as an insult. You have every right to be stressed! No one should have to go through this. I hope you can find a solution.

@JulietteBee

I am sorry this has all gone sideways for you.

A couple of points to consider:

Rule number one of Dementia Fight Club is Never try to reason with a person who has a broken reasoner.

You are a proactive and pragmatic individual with the problem-solving skills of a well-trained nurse. I expect that your DM was once very like that as well; alas, that iteration of mom is gone. You can't to reason peer-to-peer about anything with your mom.

Emotional intelligence persists well into the latest stages of the disease. Mom's empathy, memory and executive function may have left the building but her ability to deeply feel the sting of your words is very much there. The mention of incontinence seems to be especially triggering for her and yet you keep bringing it up. Imagine having anosognosia; your reality is that you are this independent and proper lady who has never done such a thing and yet your daughter keeps insisting you have. How insulting that must feel.

Strategies like seat covers work best when the PWD isn't singled out. As others have suggested, the best practice is to pick something close to the same color. And then cover all the chairs. When my friend did this, she said it was to protect the furniture from the cats' shedding. She even referred to them as pet-covers. No pets? It's because you "don't want DH to get them dirty snacking". For the car, it could be "they're more comfortable" or you're "protecting resale value".

Because some PWD will retain information that has a strong emotional component, you may need to back off and revisit this to have any chance of success. It's funny, dad recalled being told by his neurologist that he wasn't allowed to drive well into the late stage. Cars were 50% of his personality. The man couldn't recall what he had for breakfast or whether his favorite child was dead or alive, but he could remember, and perseverate on, not be allowed to drive.

Please don't use the MCF as a kind of punishment. At the end of the day, you and your mom have no control over the circumstances that could result in the implementation of that as Plan B. Besides, many MCFs offer excellent care in a dementia-informed setting with failure-free activities.

This is all so hard. Basically, you are running a one-bed facility out of your home with an untrained skeleton crew. You might consider if you and your mom might be better served if she joined a MC community and you could just go back into the role of daughter. Mom and I both found our relationships with dad improved once we were no longer the enforcers.

Good luck with all this.
HB

Oh, I am sorry about all this. You have been given excellent advice already, and I am only chiming in to say I agree with others about not trying to reason and not thinking of an MCF as scary.

There are two chairs in my dad’s MC room. After spending an entire evening cleaning one upholstered cushion by hand (bleah), I bought washable seat covers for both chairs—actually, six covers so they can be exchanged easily. I sit on the covers myself, and I don’t refer to them. I also don’t talk about incontinence. Sometimes I do need to say, “You know, I think you may be uncomfortable. Let me see if we can get some help.” (Occasionally in MC I have done the helping myself, but not usually.)

The idea of an MC tour being a “scare tactic” is hard to hear, and I am particularly worried about the obstacle that this can create for you and your husband in your own thinking. Imagine that the day comes when your mom will need facility care. (That seems likely, in fact.) If you and your husband have created this idea in your own minds that this is failure and an MC is a house of horrors, then an event that is very difficult for virtually everybody will be imagined as abandonment (by you, not just by her).

There is another way to think about facility placement: as another form of care, creating conditions for your mom to live as well as possible, with as much dignity as can be managed. I promise: even if your mom is in a facility, you will be very involved in her care and advocacy.

I know how hard this all is. You will get through it. And we are with you.