My mom has always been a difficult woman to deal with but with Alzheimers, it is becoming impossible. She has always also had IBS and now she wears diapers. she needs to be cleaned up several times per day but she's becoming more combative. Backing off does help most of the time but what do we do under extreme circumstances. We can't let her sit in diarrhea filled diapers for too long for her own good but it also smells to high heaven. The other day she insisted she did not have anything in her diaper and reached and grabbed poo and then asked what it was. Now she's refusing to receive help and she's got feces all over her hands.
Then yesterday, she quickly took off her diaper and flung her diarrhea filled diaper over the chair and it splattered everywhere, but she was actually still going to the bathroom and so it was dripping everywhere and as she herself tried to deal with it it got over her hands, hair and on everything as she was swinging her hands around to prevent any help. What are you supposed to do then if she won't listen and its something that immediately needs to be handled. In this situation the only thing that worked was holding her hands to prevent her from hurting someone and insisting that she is going to be cleaned. But it was basically forced and she only calmed down when she realized there was no way out of it. The living room was so filled with splattered poo that a clean up crew was hired to clean and disinfect. We are checking with her doctor to see if meds can help us with this combatitive nature but what is the right thing to do when backing off won't work for something that needs to be immediately addresses.
Thanks
Do you have visiting nurses or personal care attendants come in sometimes, or do you do it all yourself? I agree with littletonway that it's time to place her in a nursing facility. I can see potential accusations of elder abuse if you inadvertently injure her while trying to restrain her. Old people bruise easily, and their bones are brittle. You really don't want APS coming after you.
We do have in-home caregivers in 8-10 hours a day, but we have the caregiver step back when my mom begins to get combative...that's when we try to take over -- and then of course the rest of the time, when the caregiver is not there, it is up to family. We are doing our best to honor my father's wishes as he is still so very much in love with my mom, even with all of this crazyiness. After 64 years of marriage, and at 90 years old himself, he feels the need to protect her. And he would be heartbroken if she was no longer with him. It would literally kill him I think. We have done everything we can to fill up his life with family, and he loves talking to his grand kids, who come over to "their" side of the house every night to watch a movie and talk to grandpa. (it's sort of like a duplex but with indoor access), and that has helped him refocus his interest a bit, but my mother is still his world. He loves her as much as the day he married her. So we are doing our very best, but it's just been this Spring that things have taken are quick turn for the worst. We have a call into the doc and we hope that the chemical route would help. I just can't stand the thought of seeing my father be so heartbroken, he would cry every day and would never recover if we are forced to put her in a facility. For him, it would be the same as her death. It's all just so sad. I really hate it. :(