Our mother is very dignified and passionate about her dignity. However, she does not want to wash her clothing or bathe. How can we convince her that it is necessary to shower once in a while and to wash her clothes? Her hands are also a terrible mess. She never washes them.
I'm perhaps missing something but I read through the responses and am not seeing "lashing out" or insensitivity. And for ME, that's quite ironic because I can sometimes be quite hypersensitive -- especially when it comes to my loved ones! Also, I will point out that on message boards, especially among strangers, it's often pretty easy to misinterpret because we don't know the person and thus, have no context. Also we are without the benefit of voice tone, previous interactions and body language. I understand how it can be difficult but maybe it will help if you try to assume good intent? I know at least for me, I don't have any purpose here but to try to help and certainly I don't want to hurt you or anyone else! It doesn't benefit anyone and certainly not myself.
Your parents sound like lovely people! Your mom seems to be interested in the arts, creative endeavors etc and I'm sure like most everyone, they have their lives, their routine and familiar possessions and want to continue to enjoy these things. Who can blame them! And ALL of us want to retain our autonomy as long as possible. To that end, we also want -- and deserve to have our dignity respected til the very last breath -- and I believe at least the latter is possible!
There are many ways to help with autonomy and dignity. One is to offer our loved ones several choices -- but within the realm of safety. For example: "After we get you cleaned up for the day, do you prefer your blue dress or would you like these comfy tan slacks with your white sweater?" Or, "Unfortunately your mechanic tells me the car can't be repaired. So let's figure out who you would like to take you to do groceries each week, me or sister? Remind me what grocery store YOU prefer again and we'll be sure to get you to that one! Maybe we can go out for lunch first would you like that?" If she asks "What about going shopping for a new car?" You might say, "Yes, I mentioned that but because of the pandemic, there is a shortage plus the economy has driven up prices sky high. Mr Mechanic doesn't want you to be scammed so HE advises we wait 3 to 6 months and he expects things will be different by then."
If you feel that you and your sister can manage things for now then work it until it no longer works but in the meantime I would urge you to make arrangements for when things deteriorate because they WILL, and you don't want to wait and have to make life altering decisions when they are in crisis and thus, you and sis are too. Look into memory care facilities, meet with the staff and take a tour privately with your sister or the two of you separately, take copious notes on the positive and negatives and your "first impressions" of each facility. Ask lots of questions. Check online reviews and complaints. Getting a power of attorney appointed is very important as is having an idea of what they have for monthly bills (credit cards issued by what bank/company, balance, when payments are due, are they current, utility bills, automatic bill pays/withdrawals, any monthly subscriptions, Internet, phone, satellite tv, streaming services, grocery deliveries, cable etc). You will want to know what their investments are if any, stocks, IRA's, bonds, CDs, mutual funds, annuities, etc. If they are or were computer savvy, get passwords to monitor these things, emails, social media etc. Just some suggestions because if you wait until the end to prevent hurt feelings or because you feel it may be easier that way, I can assure you first hand that would be a HUGE mistake and lead to more headaches (and likely heartache) than you can possibly imagine! Take care and best wishes!
When my brother was diagnosed with probable early Lewy's dementia I learned that one indicator was lack of taste (and with that, of course, goes the ability to smell things). This fastidious man had taken to not wearing deoderant anymore because he couldn't tell his tshirts smelled. He, who was offended by almost nothing when we would talk DID take a bit of offense when I told him we would be washing all the tshirts in the closet, and that he had to start wearing deoderant. His response to me was "Well, Ernie doesn't tell me I smell" and I replied "But Ernie never would tell you ANYTHING unpleasant, and I WILL". We finally had a laugh about it, and he was back to his deoderant.
If you cannot discuss this and get some agreement then you are looking at this being an effect of the severity of her dementia, and there will need to be arrangements made for bathing by an aid with help of shower chair, sprayer, good grab bars and etc.
Sure wish you the best.
I wonder what she really wanted:
a) Congratulations for the wonderful job she was doing.
b) Prayers, and confirmation that Jesus is on her side.
c) Praise for how brilliantly her mother was coping with dementia. Gee, all that poetry! And hand holding in the supermarket!
d) A magic wand, sent over the net, to overcome the effects of dementia.
I was beginning to doubt and I keep going back to see if I could or should have worded my comment any more gentle.
I did not want to make any more comments "defending" my reply for fear of further upsetting the OP
Some of the responses you get here will be very matter of fact. Accept that and please don't be hurt by it. You will get lots of loving support as well so ignore anything that hurts or annoys you. You will disagree with some advice. Again, just ignore it. Don't throw away the excellent advice due to a few things that will inevitably rub you the wrong way. I've had some responses to me that have really pissed me off too but I get way too much valued advice and support to consider leaving.
With dementia, as others have said, the brain is broken. Your mom is no longer the same lady she was before she developed this horrible disease. Yes, there are moments she seems like your regular old mom but don't let that fool you. You have to set things up for the worst of her condition, not the best. Mostly because she will slowly but surely continue to decline.
Does dad drive? If not, the keys and the car need to disappear. If you have to be the grownup and take care of this, please to it ASAP. My mom was very angry when the doctor told her she had dementia and could not drive any longer. 2 years later, she still brings it up! Knowing she was unsafe, I knew it was over. I could not have dealt with the guilt if she had hurt or killed someone. Dismantle the car somehow so it does not start. Lose her keys. Get the car towed away and make excuses for why it's not back yet. Same vague answer every time.
Hygiene is tough. I would wash her hands every day, multiple times. My mom would lick her fingers at meals a lot and it totally grossed me out. I knew damn well that she was NOT washing her hands afterwards and felt like my whole house was contaminated. Yuck. So before meals just say mom come over here to the sink so we can wash up before breakfast/lunch/dinner. And the thing I found was not to ask but to kindly tell. Don't ask her if she wants to. Just say it's time to X. If she realllly doesn't want to she can still say no, but being assertive helped me get mom to do a lot of things I know she would have balked at.
Get a cleaning lady. Then hire an aid, say for 3 hours once a week. Then increase it more and more until you and your sister are not getting driven into the ground. A good aid can do her shower, etc. I found the best aides were in their 50s and 60s. The 20 year olds were just not assertive enough. You guys need help if you intend to keep them at home much longer.
Best of luck.
That is not fair of him to expect you and your sister to be the only one’s helping . You will burn out . Perhaps you or your sister can distract Mom in another room in the house while the other speaks to Dad about this. Do not give him a choice. Tell him it is too much for two people to cover . This is a common problem where the elderly refuse “ strangers “ to come and give care . This often results in burn out for the family caregivers resulting in the elderly being placed sooner in a facility . Tell him that you and your sister need to be able to take care of yourselves as well or you won’t be able to care for your parents . I’m sorry they are being stubborn about this . Your mother can not make decisions like this as she does not accurately recognize her deficits and care needs.
Being a caregiver means you keep them safe , it does not mean you have to make them happy . You are now the parent and they don’t like that . At any given time you and your sister have the choice to say you can not provide hands on care any longer and your father would need to hire help or you can help place your parents in Assisted living . Please do not get swallowed by FOG ….fear, obligation, guilt. I learned on this site that “ Those that need help need to be the ones that compromise”. But your parents are wanting things their way. There is another member here that says something like ….” .nothing gets an elderly placed in a facility faster than stubbornness “.
Whatever you do, please make sure that your mother doesn’t drive. It isn’t safe for other people, even if it's upsetting for you to stop it.
*Convincing* will be done by actions, not words.
I may have this wrong so please correct me..
Father is mentally sharp & physically healthy - except a bad back.
Mother is able bodied & also well but has some cognitive impairements.
Sister & yourself take turns living with them to provide the care & supervision they need to stay living in their home.
Some people give up their own separate life plans to be fulltime caregivers. Live the same blended together life. If you all get along, enjoy your lives, enjoy the nice lake house location - well, who am I to say do it differently.
They all had their heads buried in the sand and let her walk all over them. Nobody wanted to be the 'bad guy' and they were staunchly hanging on to the idea that if they ever put her in a home, she'd die in a week.
Guess what?
She's FINE. Well, as fine as can be. She's very bad off, mentally--they assumed a level 1 care (minimum involvement from staff at the ALF) and instead she comes in at a 4. There was some talk she was going to have to move to Memory Care. That's actually still up in the air.
I think that families mean well, but cannot take of the rose colored glasses to see the reality of what's going on. It's hard, I've watched DH and his sibs prop her up for a year+ of what they thought was independent living.
IL at the cost of 6 adults giving up THEIR lives to make her happy. And she still wasn't.
Dementia is awful. DH states his mom is crazy. I keep telling him she's got dementia. He refuses to believe that, on some level. At least now he understands that she truly is a mean person at heart-and the dementia makes that worse.
They put her in an ALF yesterday and the only comment DH made was 'we should have done this 5 years ago'. Amen to that.
At least she didn't fight us on giving up driving. Too many close calls--she sold her car and didn't look back.
One of the very noticeable signs of dementia was when my once immaculate MIL stopped bathing. Maybe 6 weeks ago? I went into her now empty house today and the stench about knocked me out. That alone should have clued the kids into the fact things were not 'right'. Sure hope she got a shower today. The ALF will not allow people to go about smelling. Showers are 2xs a week, no matter what.
2. Your mother can no longer handle certain aspects of her ADL's (Activities of Daily Living)
She needs to be make that must be accompanied to the bathroom. It is important that she properly clean herself as well as her hands.
She needs help showering.
If she gets into PJ's to go to bed her clothes can be removed and clean clothes put in the same place for her.
If your dad can not manage doing these then you need to consider placing mom in Memory Care. The other option might be to place both in Assisted Living if mom is not at risk of escaping and dad would watch her.
Your mom has dementia you can not "convince" her.
My mother had dementia. She also would not bathe for me or even eat more than cookies . The doctor told me that Mom would never listen to me again . She won’t want to be told what to do by her daughter . The doctor said at some point most dementia patients will not listen to family and need to be taken care of by non family . Please find an assisted living facility for your parents where they have caregivers 24/7. They can not live alone anymore . If needed sell their home to pay for it. I do hope your parents have you or a sibling named as POA .
1. Your mother is not the same person who was dignified. She's allowing herself to be dirty for extended times and her clothes aren't clean. This is because she has dementia.
2. Your mother does not need to be able to drive. She needs to be able to get places, and she needs someone else to take her. If she forgets to turn the car off, what else will she forget? Which pedal is the brake? How to work a turn signal? What STOP signs mean? You cannot let her keep driving. She has dementia.
3. You want to convince your mother of something. Those days are over. Her brain doesn't have the capacity to understand. She has dementia.
4. You and your sister are doing full-time care. No, you are not. Full-time means full-time, not when one or the other of you can be there. Mom needs 24/7 care now. She has dementia.
You and sister should make a detailed plan for your parents' care, and there's no shame if you can't do all of it yourselves. There comes a time when that's impossible. That seems to be now.
Please go look at some assisted living places so you'll know your options. Managing in-home care for two people is extremely difficult and time-consuming, and the best thing for them would be a place where they can socialize, make new friends, and be cared for by professionals. It would be good for them and good for you.
Good luck as you explore the options.
Pick up a copy of the book Understanding the Dementia Experience by Jennifer Ghent-Fuller on Amazon so you can learn about dementia and how to deal with your mother and what lies ahead. Dementia is a progressive disease that worsens over time until death.
I had to place both of my parents in Assisted Living after dad broke his hip and segue mom into the Memory Care building when her dementia became more than the AL could manage safely. Both AL and MC did a good job maintaining her dignity with love and caring. Even when she was dying with hospice, her "girls" asked me if they could dress her in her beautiful tops and not a nightgown to receive visitors paying their respects. Since she was comatose, they had to cut the tops down the back to get them on her w/o too much fuss. I said sure. She looked beautiful even as she lay dying at 95.
I know the pain and heartache this brings, and how difficult it is to watch the decline of parents, especially with dementia. It's a cruel and relentless disease that I hate with every fiber of my being.
We don't "want" to take things away from them, yet it's our job to keep them safe when they no longer have the ability to do so. Wishing you the best of luck with a difficult situation.
Your mothers brain is now broken and she will never be the same person she was before, so you and your siblings while doing your best to care for your parents I'm sure, must realize that there comes a time when you must seek either outside help to come in to assist with bathing and perhaps even cleaning the house and doing laundry, or it may be time to be looking into having your parents placed in an assisted living facility with a memory care attached for your mother as she gets worse.
And the fact that in your profile you say that your mother "needs to be able to drive" even though she gets confused, scares the bejesus out of me and for all the innocent people that may be in her path one day and that she may hit and injure or God forbid kill.
Really, now that has to stop TODAY. I know that you say that someone usually goes with her when she drives, but you are only asking for trouble by allowing her to drive.
Do you realize that if she was in an accident and injured or killed someone, and the police found out she had dementia, that your parents could lose everything they own in a lawsuit?
This is serious and it's certainly not worth taking the risk of innocent people getting hurt or killed because you feel your mother "needs to be able to drive."
Take away her keys, dismantle the car in some way and let the DMV know of her dementia diagnosis ASAP.
And then you and you siblings start looking into what your parents future care looks like.
Memory loss removes the knowledge of when they last washed/changed clothes/used the toilet.
Prompts to are needed to start the task, then all the way through the task eg now wash your top half, now dry your legs.
Then hands-on assistance is needed eg you wash you face & I'll wash your back.
Eventually a caregiver is required to fully take over the task.
Getting some good information from a Dementia/Alzheimer’s Society may help you. It is a progressing condition - each stage or step-down losing more skills.
If is hard but important to flip the focus on what your Mom still CAN do at each stage & encourage that.
I second a needs assessment plan.
When my Mother lost independance for washing, getting an aide to do this 2-3 x week was the solution. Too much refusal for family.
I am very sorry that you and your sister are struggling with your caregiving situation.
How far along is your mother’s dementia? Perhaps this situation has become more of a challenge than you thought it would be.
Have you considered contacting Council on Aging in your area to get an assessment of your mother’s needs?
C on A can help guide you through the process of planning for your mother’s future. She may need more care than you can give her and may need to be placed in a facility.
My mother is fairly new to full blown dementia. It has been a few months now that she has not been able to cook. She still washes her own hair before going to the hairdresser. She got stuck in the tub and my father had to pull her out and that was the last time she bathed on her own. I was able to shower her a few months back, but she does wash up before bed with a sponge bath- face and private parts. She still puts out several things daily for my father's breakfast and she sets the table and cleans up afterwards... and she gets the birdseed out and back in every day. She still makes shopping lists and we go shopping. She still knows exactly where her favorite poems are in the WH Auden book and she can harmonize to all the songs she remembers. So, in many ways, we're just starting this voyage.