Senile dementia: he's driving me nuts....?

My husband is elderly, and has senile dementia (more tests, tomorrow, to make sure). He's reached that stage where he needs to follow me around from room to room, and be practically in my pocket at all times. He needs verbal reassurance continually ("Hey, sweetheart...?" "Yes, dear?" "Nothing, I just wanted to hear you voice....Hey, sweetheart...?"). If I turn over in bed, he immediate calls out, "Where are you going?"

This is slowly driving me out of my mind.

I've got a home nurse three times a week, which allows me to go to the grocery store, but that doesn't solve the basic problem, which is that he isn't happy unless I am sitting directly across from him, doing nothing but paying attention to him.

Is anyone else going through this? Have you found anything that is a help?

Thanks so much.

I'm so sorry. My granfather had alzheimer's. Even if it is dementia, there is nothing you can do. There are some drugs that have been approved by the FDA to slow the progression of the disease, but it WILL get worse over time.

Medications include: donepezil (Aricept), galantamine (Reminyl), rivastigmine (Exelon), and tacrine (Cognex). These medications, called cholinesterase inhibitors, have been approved specifically for treatment of Alzheimer's disease.

This sounds like quite a challenge! But, I have an idea. A friend of mine got her mom in an adult daycare. She didn't remember much from day to day, but she did seem to really enjoy going, and it was a big help to the family!

I am not going through this but my mother did with her mother. It is something you have to let God handle. He will ease this tension and anxiety that you're facing and will also ease and comfort your loved one. Just trust God b/c He has a plan in all of this. It may not be what you want, but it is His will. Try to be as comforting as possible to your loved one. He is at a very sensitive state and anything negative you say may hurt him in more ways than you know. Just trust and obey God and His words.

Dealing with dementia symptoms in your own parent can stretch the limits of your sanity. Sometimes you may not even notice the first symptoms of dementia -- the slow decline of your aging parent鈥檚 memory. The symptoms of dementia may continue until your aging parent starts exhibiting signs of other mental disorders, such as paranoia or delusions, which frequently piggyback on the effects of senile dementia. These symptoms may keep reappearing, until you can鈥檛 ignore them and you鈥檙e forced to take action. Hopefully, this chapter will help you identify dementia and other mental problems in your aging parents and help you deal with the problem by getting their condition assessed by a professional.

My own mom taught school most of her life. She was highly organized and extremely independent. She read constantly and became quite adept at oil painting. At the age of 76 she moved closer to my sister and I, but her canvases and brushes never seemed to make it out of the moving boxes. I bought her a VCR for Christmas, hoping that renting movies could help her shake her newly-found disinterest in life. But the new VCR was never turned on unless I happened to visit with a movie in hand. It became, like the microwave I had gotten her a year earlier, another piece of unused technology. It never dawned on me at the time that my mom had stopped wanting to learn new things, or that this could mean that her aging mind was showing symptoms of dementia.

Soon Mom became suspicious and paranoid about her neighbors. She thought they could see into her windows, so she would keep the shades drawn tight with safety pins. She talked me into erecting a large barrier to block the neighbor鈥檚 view. I did as she asked, even though I thought it was strange to be building a barrier. Mom had always been a little paranoid anyway. I figured it was her scar from having survived the Great Depression. I rationalized that if building a barrier helped her sleep better, and she could open the shades in those darkened rooms, it was worth the effort. I didn鈥檛 realize the obvious 鈥?that her dementia and her paranoia was growing.

Believing that Mom鈥檚 depression was a result of her unhappiness with her living situation, my sister and I began a search to find her senior housing. We placed our hopes on a retirement community that offered a full-time social director to rescue her from the depressed mood we were fighting. The retirement home helped her find new friends and subdued the paranoia, but only temporarily. Soon she insisted we change her banking accounts. She accused the banks of stealing money from her safety deposit box. She also became absurdly paranoid about my brother-in-law, who she suspected, had a master key to her apartment. All missing items were blamed on this poor fellow. We never suspected that paranoia could be a symptom of dementia.

dont snap at him please. Remember he was a normal human being not long ago.It is not his fault .Some day you may be in the same situation