Mom was diagnosed with vascular dementia a little over a year ago. She is 77, my Dad is 79. My mom has always been a very strong personality, I mean strong!
Over the last year she is increasingly becoming aggressive and angry. She makes up stories and believes them to be gospel especially about drugs. She curses my Dad out over every little thing until he backs down and leaves her alone.
She barely eats, like say, she eats 2 eggs for breakfast she'll go sometimes til the next evening before she takes a few more bites of food. And she flat out refuses to take her dementia medication, I mean she will get so aggressive and angry we end up backing down for fear she'll stroke out.
She wakes up in the morning in or around the middle of stage 4 and every hour she slides, by dark she is in the middle of stage 5 if not near the end of that stage.
Does anyone in here have a LO that is this hard to deal with?
No matter how we've tried to talk to her about her meds she gets so irate that we fear she will seriously stroke out, we tried calmly talking, being a little assertive, ignoring it for a few days... nothing works. If you ask her if she took her pills she will tell you yes, if you check you quickly see she is lying. Then the next day the pills go missing, takes us days to find them. Dad even tried waking her at 5am (since she is calmer than a cucumber in those hours) and she was taking them with no problem, 4 days later she took them from him and threw them screaming she doesn't want them anymore. That was the last time she took them.
We took her to a neurologist and she walked out and refused to go back in. We are at a loss at this point. She is so hard to deal with or talk to it makes it incredibly difficult to get her to do anything.
Here is an example on what we deal with: she is telling us a made up story that never happened... she will ask us for a name or place, if you say you don't remember she gets angrier than a badger, if you make up whatever it is she asked you she gets incredibly angry and starts to curse you out, if you ignore it like you didn't hear her she starts calling you names and belittles you.
If we do get her to take her medicine for a few days in a row (which hasn't happened in about 6 months, up above) she is good... calm, not mean, she eats, can hold a conversation, more willing to do what she needs to do, and even takes her evening pill on her own!!
We are at an absolute loss on how to get her to take her medicine and eat. Those 11 steps from Alzheimer's to get them to take their meds would never ever fly with Mom, literally, she is meaner than a badger on a good day.
Thought about crushing pill and putting in food, again 2 problems with that, 1) she barely eats and 2) she feed her dogs her food.
The family Doctor, the only one she agrees to see, tells us every 3 months at her check up, that we need to get her to take the medicine... we know this, he knows this, everyone knows this but, HOW do we do it, is the question. Any and all suggestions would be greatly appreciated, especially from those that deal with the same aggressive rattlesnake.
I think I remember - do I? - that aggression and unreason and a *seriously* foul mood are symptomatic of diabetic hypos. I should go back to her doctor and ask for a referral to a specialist diabetes clinic, where you can get advice on managing the "challenging patient."
If she eats and takes only the diabetes meds, you still have difficult behaviour to cope with, but it is more than possible that she will take the dementia meds if she takes the others. And if she won’t co-operate at all, the threat is not much of an exaggeration – you may indeed be forced into this. It sounds as though her biggest sticking point is accepting that she needs the dementia meds, so it may be easier to tackle it from the other direction.
Also, with her condition, it may be that she should not have the ability to feed the dog. Her and food in one area and the dog elsewhere, until her food is eaten. The person who is sick and brain damaged can't run the show indefinitely.
She doesn't eat because she's not hungry. So if you try and get her to eat she just gives it to her dogs
**She is stuck on believing the drug companies are only out to make money and they don't care about the person or their well being. She also swears its Dad who has dementia not herself. Dad, myself and my sister are literally up agaisnt a brick wall named Carole
With delusions you need to change the subject. If she thinks the meds are bad you aren’t going to change her mind. Is she like this with any medication? Why doesn’t she eat? Is she just not hungry?
its a tough tough tough thing to deal with. I wonder if she would take them from a health care aid. My mom is sweet as pie to the ALS staff. It’s just family she’s mean to lol.