I'm with you Karen. As I've often described, when my MIL was in the
Alzheimer's unit, I had to "toss" her room every week trying to restore
order to her belongings, and every week, I'd end up with an armload of
items belonging to other residents (clothing, eyeglasses, napkins,
toiletries, nicnacs, creamers, lipsticks, books, greeting cards, you
name it).  Some of these were randomly picked up from various places
and taken back to her room by my MIL on her perambulations around the
floor, and some were "dropped off" by other residents making THEIR
rounds. With freedom to roam the entire floor, and maybe 30
residents...well, personal possessions had legs. We just couldn't keep
eyeglasses, hearing aids, and teeth ON my mother in law - she was
constantly taking them off and leaving them places or tucking them into
the garbage, the laundry, whatever ....(and she also grabbed other
people's stuff as she went about her day). You would think it would
BOTHER her to not wear them, but it didn't. She also didn't seem to be
at all troubled by wearing someone elses, and would fight with you if
you tried to take them, whether someone elses ended up on her face or
in her purse. She also wasn't bothered by wearing eye glasses so dirty
they couldn't have done anything for her vision. And then of course
there were the days where ones vaguely similar to hers would show up,
and we'd drive ourself crazy looking through a pile of eye glasses
trying to figure out which ones were hers (and yes, she'd pick labels
off things). I remember once even taking pictures of her wearing hers
with us since we couldn't remember exactly what hers looked like  (I'd
have three similar pairs of eyeglasses in my hand trying to remember
whether hers had little squares at the temple or little circles...and
of course, hubbie was no help, given that he never paid much attention
to those details). The staff tried valiantly to keep order on these
fronts - at one point, they had a lot of these items in a little tub
with her name on it in the nursing station in an attempt to actually
KEEP them safe (eyeglasses and hearing aids aren't cheap). Due to its
location near the central sitting area, the staff even tried keeping
her room locked part of the day, since her room seemed to be a real
magnet for assorted wanderers who'd end up in there and were frequently
having to be retrieved and herded out (with or without their
belongings).

I really don't know what else could have been done, but it certainly
didn't phiz my poor MIL at all. I think at a certain point, it ceases
to matter much, and you can knock yourself out but it doesn't get you
anywhere.

And yes, we'd laugh about this stuff sometimes and make black jokes -
not because we thought poor Dolli was laughable, but because if we
didn't laugh, we'd cry, and we were already ankle deep in the river
we'd already cried.

Mary G.

Anthony, that's that catch.  She doesn't _know_ where they are or apparently
which ones are hers.  She may notice an absence but since she wore contacts
for a time, she may not.  If there is something perched on her nose, she
seems happy and will tell you she can see fine.  The only way to test it is
to ask her to read something.

Right.  Now multiply that by 30 or 40 residents.  Anyone that doesn't
recognize that the caregivers do a valient job in trying to keep stuff like
glasses with the right person has never seen them trying to find something.
After awhile you just have to say "Enough!" and bow to the inevitable.
Especially when they try to swap with each other (and some do).

Anthony, I think the hardest thing for caregivers to deal with are the
things that make absolutely no sense.  Items like Ronny finding his Mom's BM
in the fridge or one friend of mine whose Mom with ALZ reduced most of her
wardrobe to scraps one day with the scissors "cutting out the patterns".  My
MIL's glasses may be planted in the garden waiting for spring for all I
know.  These are things no caregiver would anticipate because they are
things a person with a working brain just wouldn't do.  You are fortunate
that if it had to develop, it did so at a time in which Remynil is available
to help slow things down.  From what I see and hear from the caregiver side,
it seems like a race to "What next?".

Karen