Does anyone else experience these behavior patterns?
She is an elderly patient. Obsessed with going to the bathroom. I don't know what she does in there but it looks more like compulsive behavior than a need to pee or poop. She shuffles to the bathroom back and forth about 10 times within just 5mins. She goes through her Depends like it is free handout. She goes through toilet paper like nothing and even takes the toilet roll with her to her room. She feels safer with the toilet paper beside her , like it is some kind of assurance.
What I have done is close the toilet door because I notice that words don't make sense to her you can talk from morning to night until you are blue black in the face and she will keep talking with you, mostly incoherently , just a bunch of jumbled words that don't make sense. So actions speak more to them. I see her starting her episode of bathroom obsession , I close the door and she comes back few times out of her compulsive habit just to see a closed door. And she will get frantic and start smacking her lips (she also has tardive dyskenesia) but after a few times she goes away. So one way to solve it.
She is hungry ALL THE TIME. And she has a bad diet, her son doesn't help in that he buys her junk take outs all the time, she doesn't want to eat vegetables or anything out of the norm ( which is her fast food) and she is excellent at foraging through the kitchen for sweet snacks like muffins and chocolates and candies and ice cream and especially coke. Her son buys all this crap for her. She eats more than an elephant in one day.
When she has her episodes in the evenings, she gets extremely bothersome, keeps coming to me or her son and talking about stuff that doesn't make sense or of no importance . this can go on for 4hrs non stop just her stuffing in and out of her room and then talking nonsense. Non stop for 4hrs. When she has her episode she tries to walk out of the house ( classic sun downer trying to escape) and it involved the police a couple of times and even the neighbors.
Any suggestion on what to do when they are trying to escape? One time I got so annoyed I took a chair and sat in front of the door blocking it and she kept standing in front of me talking nonsense. Goes back to her room and comes back again and again and again. This went on for 2 hrs.
