A Nice Place

Courtesy: www.carvedwalkingsticks.com

It was decided to move Dad to a nice place.  Somewhere with less carpet and therefore less pee smell. 

Mum sent this message  July 11 2010 at 3:25pm

'Danny, Maeva and I looked at a new rest home facility yesterday. Its in (blank, blank, blank) and with luck the owner will phone either Danny or me tomorrow and we can start things rolling for Dad. Its a newly opened place and they have three empty rooms. Specifically for dementia in the nature of where dad is at. We are hopeful.'

Long story short our hopes were dashed.

This was where Dad's care and health started going to hell.

Dad managed to escape from this establishment twice that we know of.  He'd wander off down the road and, by all accounts, end up asking shopkeepers to call his family to come get him.  It's a miracle he could remember the phone number.

As the family lived some distance away the first response was to call the care facility and ask if they knew where Dad was....fairly obviously they didn't.

Then, one day, the facility called the police.  Dad had 'gone off' (Kiwi talk for had an outburst) and they couldn't handle it.

He had used his walking stick to attack the property, smashing glass and, I believe, having a go at the staff.  The police carted him off and he eventually wound up drugged to the eyeballs in a hospital.

It turns out the new  'no care' facility had no idea how to handle Alzhiemer's patients.  They had a 'do it my way and don't argue' attitude with the clients which, anyone who knows anything about Alzhiemer's can tell you, ain't gonna work.  They were also of the door locking brigade and didn't allow free movement between the garden and the house. 

This, apparently, is what led to Dad 'going off'.

The story goes something like this: He asked to go out to the garden.  Staff unlocked the door and let him out.  Then they locked the door after him and forgot about him.  (Not being aware of their clients where-abouts was a major fault of this facility).  Eventually he wanted to come back in.  No-one was around to unlock the door for him.  This got him upset and very...unhappy.

When Dad's temper gets up its quite fiery. 
This day, his fire was raging.
Dad smashed his way in then smashed lots of other things too.
But quite frankly I'd get shitty being locked out and forgotten about in what is supposed to be my new home.

Suffice to say, Dad never went back there.
Mum decided she didn't really like the place and, hardly surprising, they wouldn't take him.
He stayed in the hospital for a while, drugged like a zombie because that's what hospitals do, till another nice place was found,

His extended stay in the hospital on zombie creating drugs was the next step in Dad's downward spiraling care.

We decided a hospital is definitely not nice place for Alzheimers sufferers.

Lavendar Spray

One day we were visiting Dad when the staff had to use Lavendar Spray on him.

Actually, I think they used lavender on him fairly frequently when he first moved in.  One of the reasons I liked this establishment was the fact they used alternative therapies with the clients.  Their motto was to limit reliance on medication where drugs were not required.

I failed to ask a few pertinent questions, such as which alternatives, who was their consultant, what were their qualifications etc, etc.

Basically this place used aromatherapy, which meant a lot of lavender oil, and distraction techniques.

Unfortunately Dad wasn't exactly distract-able.  At this point in time he was still aware enough to know he was not where he wanted to be.  Home.  With mum.

He still recognised the immediate family when we visited, even if it required a minute or two of prompting to get the actual name straight.  He could also, occasionally, identify some members of the extended whanau. When friends visited, he usually didn't know who they were, but he pretended to.

That's one thing Dad was good at, making anyone who came to see him feel so welcome, like a long lost friend.   It did take a few minutes for some visitors to click he had no idea who they were and was not keeping up with the conversation.

If Dad did get himself worked up into a state the staff would attempt distraction techniques and if that was looking unsuccessful they'd combine this strategy with spraying lavendar oil into the air around him.  Always talking quietly and trying to get him onto some other thought.

I'm not sure how much the lavendar contributed to Dad eventually returning to his room, grumping all the way.

Of course, the Lavendar Spray technique to settle a stubborn Alzhiemers sufferer like Dad did not always work.  On one occasion that I know of, because I was present, the staff decided to attempt some heavy handed tactics, which resulted in me and mum being upset and Dad using his walking stick as a weapon. 

Fortunately common sense did prevail and everybody backed off till we had Dad sufficiently calmed down. It was fairly obvious the best remedy for Dad was Mum staying right beside him.

Personally I would have preferred if they also utilised homeopathy.  They could have called in a homeopath, done a full consult on Dad and given him homeopathics. 

But, because homeopaths are more expensive than aromatics Dad got to smell of a lot of lavendar spray

Safety and Sanity Move

When it comes to Alzheimers, it's not just the sufferer whose sanity and safety is of concern.

My sister came to stay at Mum’s place, as live in help with Dad.   She came with her two youngest boys.

I’ll admit we weren’t sure this was a good move.  Dad liked his house his way.   Having extra people around, especially lively young boys, was bound to get up his nose.  But mum was adamant everything would be fine.  She can be a stubborn woman sometimes.

Mum was, and still is, involved in local community activities.  I think she wanted someone around, someone who Dad knew, someone she was comfortable with, to take the attention off her and keep Dad happy and occupied while she did her own thing.

Sounds good in theory, but everybody has a life to live and that included my sister and her boys.  Mum did enjoy their company and my sister did help take a load off in a lot of ways but, as time went on, Dad got worse in his acceptance of ‘others’ in the house.  He started to view the boys rather negatively. 

I’m not sure, actually, if he was jealous - they were interference to his direct access to mum.  There were times, I'm sure, when he thought he should be the only one who was allowed her attention.  Or whether he saw them as a reminder of his loss of control.  Not only was his mind playing tricks on him but he no longer ruled his own home.  The dynamics of who was in charge in the household had moved away from him, to Mum. 

He thought he should be able to tell these boys what was what and they should listen.  They eventually figured out it’s best to stay out of the way, which is hard to do when you all eat together.  A TV room was created upstairs so they could get some peace and distance themselves from any craziness downstairs. 

I give them their dues.  They were living at mum's for a while and many times were able to take humour out of less than humourous situations.  Rehua would recount, with a twinkle in his eye and a laugh, Poppa's getting mad over something he himself considered pointless, like having breakfast.

Dad- have your breakfast

Rehua- I've had breakfast

Dad - You have to have breakfast

Rehua - But I've already had breakfast.

Dad made lots more rumblings about having breakfast.

Rehua, from memory, went and had more breakfast, which for a growing boy suited him just fine.

Though some things could be taken with humour, I would hazard a guess that a childs patience and understanding of an angry Poppa wears thin eventually.  Especially when the bad, seemingly irrational mood rears it's head too often. 

Dad’s frustration with whatever was, or was not, going on in his head, made him angry.  His Alzheimer’s, that’s what I’m blaming anyway, made him harder to deal with and pacify.  

Apparently there comes a point where, if you can distract an Alzheimer’s sufferer long enough, they’ll forget what annoyed them and you can move them on to another activity.  Dad was not at that point. 

Once he got an idea in his head it could be difficult to shift him.  It was as if the idea went round and around like a looped message with no stop button.  And if you did manage to distract him, it was temporary.  The recording would start again.  It seemed the only thing that distracted him was a new looping message and we hadn’t figured out how to start one of those.

Usually Dad took his frustrations, when they built up, out on Mum.  Shouting, mumbling, glaring and threatening.  Eventually he could no longer contain himself and his anger spilled over to the boys. 

It’s sad to think that the boys’ memories of Dad may well be little more than an old angry man.
It was time to move them out of the house, for their sanity and safety.