Finding a Lost Cell Phone

Thread view:

Enable EMail Alerts

Start New Thread

Thread rating:

Robert E. Lewis - 23 Nov 2004 18:22 GMT

This has been driving me crazy since yesterday; I know AD patients often
misplace things in odd places, so I'm hoping against hope someone will have
some ideas for finding it and helping keep Dad from losing it again.

I was out yesterday and when I phoned home my father started telling me he'd
lost his cell phone. The cell phone is how he contacts me if I'm out -- he
cannot remember my cell number to dial it from the phone, can't remember to
use the speed-dial on his regular telephone or to luck up my number on the
Rolodex on his desk (he can remember to use the regular phone speed-dialer
to call his lady-friend, and the Rolodex to call the Old Geezer buddies he
has lunch with twice a months, but he's got it in his head to call my cell
phone he must call from his cell phone and there ain't no getting this out
of his head).

At some point he must have been thinking of phoning me and he carried the
phone off his desk and... gone. I tried the obvious approach of phoning the
number, hoping to follow the ring back to the phone, but one of his
recurring confusions is that instead of hanging up at the end of a phone
call, he turns it off (when I bought him this cell phone more than a year
ago, I especially picked almost identical to his old phone but with a
not-so-obvious off button, but he's managed to find it and cement in his
mind that pushing that button is the way to disconnect. So, it won't
ring.

He can't tell me anything he was doing during this period where he might
have had the phone in his hand. It was raining and he's having trouble
walking anyway, so I believe him when he says he didn't go outside; I've
checked all the usual suspects -- under sofa cushions, under his bed, on the
floor around his desk, in the bathroom, etc. The last time he lost the cell
phone, he had decided to move the little speaker for his computer system,
put the phone on the shelf where the speaker had been -- then decided he
wanted the speaker back in its old location and put it in front on the
phone, so it's possible it's hidden behind something I'm unaware has been
moved in months.

So... practical questions (assuming the damn' thing ever turns up): any
tips on breaking him of the habit of turning the phone off instead of
hanging it up? The location of the power button makes taping it over
impractical, there's not much room for a label on it (everything in his room
is labeled -- his computer, the TV, the place where he plugs in the stereo
headphones, etc.)

And how to help him keep track of it? He has a nice holder for the phone,
bought especially because it was always falling out of his shirt pocket,
where he'd stuff it along with one or more pairs of eyeglasses (usually just
before bending over to tie his shoe, whereupon they'd all fall out) -- but
he doesn't use the holder except to hold the phone clipped on his desk -- he
takes it out to carry it around.

My just taking over care of the phone isn't the answer, since the major
purpose of the phone is to provide him with a way he remembers to reach me
if I'm away from the house. When he was in the hospital I brought him his
cell phone so he could call me -- he just wasn't able to manage it from the
hospital phone (then when he checked out, he wanted to take the hospital's
phone with him, thinking I'd brought it from home).

Signature

Robert