Bringing Nan home for visits

[Hairydogmummy]

Hi All. In need of some advice about whether to bring my Nan to my house sometimes, for dinner or just to be out of the home and around us for a few hours some days. DM is worried that she might not want to go back to the home if we do this and she hasn't brought her to her house since she went in the home 4 weeks or so ago. Nan has vascular dementia which declined rapidly over recent months. Although she generally knows who people are in terms of names she doesn't remember what she has done or where she is and why a lot of the time. I don't want to make things worse and confuse or distress her more.

From my experience, she would find this quite disorientating and yes might not understand why she is leaving the home and on the other side why she has to go back.

I can understand why you think it would be a nice idea but I think your mum is right, your nan is likely to find it confusing and distressing. My mother has dementia and after she moved to her care home I didn't take her on outings. I initially thought I would, but I realised it wouldn't be a good idea.

A stable familiar environment is important for people with dementia, so it would be better to visit your nan in the care home.

I think she would find it confusing and possibly be quite distressed and thereafter very unsettled.
Routine and familiarity is the usual recommendation for people living with Alzheimers, so any disruption to that can be upsetting.
Maybe read up a bit on Alzheimers UK for ideas.
I know it is really hard, but what you /I think of as small kindnesses, like outings, can be quite frightening.

Familiarly and routine is key, I would enjoy visits to your Nan but not take her out.

When my Mum was at a home they advised not to take her out once she had got settled in. My SIL wanted her home for Christmas, but it would've meant nothing to Mum at that stage, and again the home said to leave her in her routine. It's very hard, and it seems heartless, I know, but I would leave her where she is, and visit while she knows who you are

Great thanks so much. DM has been taking her out a couple of times a week to the hairdressers and garden centres, shops etc. Is this not a good idea either then?

I suppose it depends how she responds to returning to the home. I won't be taking MIL out again, because once outside she decides for herself where she thinks we're going, which is usually back to 1940s Scotland or thereabouts. Then she's not only disappointed by the actual destination, but angry about going back to 'that big grey house'. If your nan gets something out of going to hairdressers and garden centres, I don't think it's a problem, especially if it forms part of her current routine. But I'd go along with advice from her professional carers about visiting other households.

I took her to the hairdresser yesterday, as DM does every Saturday and when she got back she didn't know she lived at the home and even when we went to sit in the garden she forgot where she was and was surprised when she got back to her room. It was awful when I came to leave, she said she needed to go home and didn't want me to leave her there on her own etc. She's upset that she can't be cared for by her family and keeps saying how she cared for her own mum until she passed from dementia which she did. It's unfair I'm being left here, what have I done wrong etc. It's scary how fast she's going downhill. The carer said to me that it was being in there that was making her worse which wasn't very comforting!

She seems to fully understand she's been placed in care? So I'd echo the other posters and not keep taking her out.

Can she not live at home with a live in carer or family looking after her, that is what's confused her, why is she in a care home and not able to stay home?

I don't think that's an enormously helpful suggestion, @dreamonlucid . Most loving families feel a great deal of guilt about elderly relatives going into care homes, and it only happens when other avenues (and carers) have been exhausted. The 24 hour care that would be required by someone with rapidly deteriorating vascular dementia would be prohibitively expensive for most families, and the time would inevitably come when OP's grandmother failed to recognise her own house as 'home'.

When my dad first went into a care home (90) we used to take him out regularly. Garden centre, back to mine for tea, dentist, pub even for lunch. It would usually exhaust him but he did enjoy it. Also birthdays and Christmas.

But as his dementia has got worse, we’ve gradually stopped. He’s a fall risk, can’t get to the bathroom safely ( hence accidents) and asks when he is going back as soon as he gets anywhere.

If your mum is up to it and enjoys it, I’d continue doing it. When she can’t cope, you’ll know.

As for the carer who said the home is making her worse …she’s in the wrong job. She will get worse wherever she is - that’s inevitable.

As for looking after her at home, I’m not sure people realise that dementia means 24 hour care and company ~ my dad constantly gets up in the night and falls. It’s life changing for carers and none of us are paying out the enormous sums that are required for care homes without having tried all we can.

Understood, I was just curious as the OP and family have the time to spend taking her out and about so was curious about the decision.

But I can see how that came across wrong.

I think people with dementia can be like toddlers, they don't like change but that doesn't mean you never take them anywhere as different experiences are good for them unless severe dementia. My son as a toddler hated leaving the house to go to the park and then never wanted to go home once there. I think not getting upset if your nan doesn't want to go back to the nursing home is important. Many people with dementia can get overly emotional but it's sad if people stop visiting or taking them out because it " upsets them". The upset is usually only temporary

My MIL was fine being taken out to a cafe. But SIL taking her back to her (MIL's) home for Christmas where SIL and family had always spent Christmas with her, didn't go well. She way more disoriented by that than by any outing. She actually thought she was at her daughter's home at one point. That was just a couple of months after she went into care. SIL didn't take her there again.

Please, please don't liken older people with dementia to toddlers.

Using similar strategies is one thing, but as soon as you start likening them to toddlers you're disrespecting them.
Respect is an enormous part of caring for people with dementia.

I work with people with dementia and think there can be similarities. Why do you dislike toddlers so much? Are you disrespecting toddlers?

Are you serious?

Do you want your carers to say that you're like a toddler when you're in your 80s? Do you want to be infantilised?
You treat the behaviour, you don't liken them to children. What I loved most about my MILs care home is that the carers all talked to the residents as adults. Even those who were no longer verbal.

My mum's carers however...let's just say that they got the sharp end of her tongue when they babied her.

@dreamonlucid I have the time at the moment over summer as I'm a teacher. DM does as she's retired but tried having Nan at her house and she was waking her all the time and she couldn't cope. DM isn't mentally strong and was on anti anxiety medication even before Nan moved in. She lasted three weeks. She couldn't be left at home as she stopped recognising it and kept walking off at night to get to her previous home.

@theresnolimits I agree. She's not a very nice carer...I don't like the way she speaks to the residents at all. Did your dad realise he lived at the home? At the moment my Nan has to be told all the time that she lives there. She insists she doesn't and needs to go home but then she forgot who everyone was a few weeks ago and now remembers that fine.

TBH I wouldn’t.

Against the care home’s advice, we brought FiL (also vascular dementia) back to ours (where he’d stayed for about a year previously) for a couple of nights for his first Christmas at the CH. We reasoned (stupidly) that because he’d always enjoyed Christmas with us pre dementia, he’d be fine.

It was a bad mistake. He was worried, fretful and unsettled, often thinking it was his own house and there were jobs he should be doing. Plus for the first time he started asking where MiL (dead some 10 years) was.

In future we left him where he was, in his safe, familiar routine, and just went for short visits.

@saraclara , I’m sure the pp didn’t mean to be disrespectful. But when she was in later-stage dementia, some of my DM’s behaviour did remind me of a very small child. Her former self would have been appalled, but she once fished a little nugget of poo out of her pants - ‘Oh, look!’ She didn’t even know what it was.

I had to take her by the hand, saying (very nicely) ‘Come on, let’s go and wash your hands’, much as I would have to a 2 year old.

On a similar occasion, after a ‘loo stop’ she went to try to wash her hands in the flushing loo.
She’s been gone for several years now so I don’t feel (too) disloyal writing this.

@GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER love your user name lol! I've been wondering about Xmas as my Nan loves it but it might not go well judging by what she's like now never mind in 6 months time. Re your other comment, I was at the care home the other day and a lady had wet herself so she stripped off from the waist down in the dining room. Behaviours do sometimes seem a bit toddler like but the way they need to be treated is way different given the fact their brains are declining rather than developing and at the moment Nan still has the ability to 'reason' with us in an adult way but based on misremembering. So difficult. I wasn't offended at all by @saraclara it's a super complicated illness.

I do understand the ‘toddler’ comment because my dad absolutely lives in the moment like a child. He can enjoy the moment, but it’s completely forgotten the minute it’s over. Nothing sticks.

I always respected my toddlers’ feelings and I respect my dad’s. I respond with ( I hope) love, comfort and warmth because that’s what he needs now.

I used to take my mum out from her care home (dementia) … it used to distress her and I eventually decided I was doing it for me rather than her … thinking it was something I “ought to be doing”.

So difficult. I wasn't offended at all by @saraclara it's a super complicated illness.

Thank you for understanding, @Hairydogmummy . I do understand that you meant that some behaviours need the same approach as toddlers do. But in my 15 years of watching my mum and MIL's carers at work, I have recognised that there's a huge difference between those who respond to their behaviours 'as if' they're toddlers, and those who use similar techniques but still see them as adults whose abilities have declined.

So when I come across anyone who says something along the lines of ' they're just like toddlers really' my hackles rise. Because the carers I've come across who've said things like that, have invariably stopped treating them with respect. So it's a mindset really. The techniques might be similar, but like I say, my MILs carers were able to carry out those techniques while still respecting her as an adult.