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Medical Forum / Diseases and Disorders / Alzheimer's / April 2004My mother doesn't recognize her house
When sometimes I take my mother in my car for something e then we return home, my mother feels uneasy and doesn't recognize her home. She becomes upset and wants to go 'to her house' where her father is waitng for her. My mother is 91 e suffers from AD. Is this attitude common? What should I do? Never take her away form home? J- > When sometimes I take my mother in my car for something e then we return > home, my mother feels uneasy and doesn't recognize her home. She becomes [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > What should I do? Never take her away form home? > J- I'd just reassure her gently that this is where you are going right now, and hope that once she gets inside she will recognize her space again. Once I took my mother in law with me to a visit to my father two hours away. She forgot who I was the whole way home, and did not recognize me even all the way back to our own driveway. It was a weird experience, but once I was inside the house she seemed to recognize me again.  SignatureEvelyn (To reply to me personally, remove sox) My husbands grandmother did the same thing when you took her somewhere. We would remind her that is was her house, and that was where we were going, so she was happy to go too. She passed away in 2003. My grandmother does the same thing now. She wants to go 'home' and see her parents (who passed away many years ago). She does not remember they are gone. She thinks she is on vacation and when I talk to her she asks about "back home" like I am somewhere else, and asks me how other relatives are doing. From our experience, this is just "normal" for AD. Sharon My mother gets like that everyday. She thinks she is down the street at a neighbors and after I am with her for a couple of hours she wants me to go up to her house with her. She is in a wheel chair and she gets very angry with me because I won't help her get up and and go "home" with her. Thats when all her cursing begins and she tells me to get out and she never wants to see me again. How long does this part last? She has been home from the hospital for over a year and this has been going on from then. Nancy Z >When sometimes I take my mother in my car for something e then we return >home, my mother feels uneasy and doesn't recognize her home. She becomes >upset and wants to go 'to her house' where her father is waitng for her. My >mother is 91 e suffers from AD. >Is this attitude common? >What should I do? Never take her away form home? Yes, it's common - my wife often wanted to "go home" to her childhood and live with her sisters again. That was a time that she remembered as being particularly safe and happy - unlike the world of AD. Just keep taking her out for as long as *she enjoys the outings. Staying at home all the time could be worse for her - she'd still be wanting to go some place else, since her unhappiness is within her own mind. Ditto what Evelyn and Sharon said in their posts. My mother went through this "phase" several months ago, but has passed out of it. She would be inside her own home, saying she wanted to go home. Pointing out that she was in her own home didn't do any good. We got so we'd take her for a walk, or drive around a bit in the car, and then as we pulled into the driveway, her home would again look familiar. Of course, that would last for about 30 minutes, and it would start over again... There are a number of different phases that AD patients go through. Not everyone goes through all the same phases, but this is a common one, as I have learned from the other, more experienced "posters" here. -Jennie > When sometimes I take my mother in my car for something e then we return > home, my mother feels uneasy and doesn't recognize her home. She becomes [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > What should I do? Never take her away form home? > J- J The first time we drove up to my house and my dad asked where we were, I was surprised. Now, he not only never knows where he is, I have to instruct him to get out of the car. He hasn't seemed to want to wander anymore. I used to have to move furniture and put lamps in front of doors so he couldn't find them. I'll never forget, one evening, he went into a bedroom that had no exit after apparently searching elsewhere, and asked in an incredulous voice, "Isn't there any way to get out of this house?!" Has anyone else had the experience that a once serious wanderer stops trying? Holly > J > The first time we drove up to my house and my dad asked where we were, I [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > experience that a once serious wanderer stops trying? > Holly Holly, Several times now my mother in law has forgotten where she sleeps and where her room is. For three years she has always slept in the exact same room, but at bedtime she would forget and ask my husband "where am I supposed to sleep tonight?" That happened a few times, but not recently. For the last few weeks she knows where her room is and goes to it when she wants to go to sleep. On another occasion or two she has tried to leave her room and somehow ended up in the opposite corner from where the door is, and even though there is a night light in there, she was banging on the wall in the corner trying to find the exit. She has always recognized the house from outside though, and knows this is our house, and she always recognizes us inside it. Although there was that time when we were out in the car and she forgot who I was, imagining I was the daycare bus driver. So when they forget something it isn't always permanently forgotten, but it can be just for that day or week..... though it can be permanently forgotten too. SignatureEvelyn (To reply to me personally, remove sox) : "Isn't there any way to get out of this house?!" Has anyone else had the : experience that a once serious wanderer stops trying? Oh yes. To inhibit surprise strolls I had to put those cheap little sliding door lock thingies on all of the exterior doors in the month before moving my LO over to my house (that amongst many mods made to prevent problems, like removing the knobs from the stove, hiding the toaster, etc). Then once we moved her back here she wound up meeting my neighbors by ringing their doorbell at 2AM one morning, leading to the removal of the doorknobs at my house. Fast forward about a year and a half. Now all of the wanderlust is gone, along with another piece of thinking ability :( the one constant of AD... nothing stays the same... sad when so much is lost...but it's also reassuring sometimes...at least one knows that when a new annoying behaviour pops up ~this too shall pass~ > : "Isn't there any way to get out of this house?!" Has anyone else had the > : experience that a once serious wanderer stops trying? [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] > Fast forward about a year and a half. Now all of the wanderlust is > gone, along with another piece of thinking ability :( Hi Holly, > J > The first time we drove up to my house and my dad asked where we were, I [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > experience that a once serious wanderer stops trying? > Holly Yes Mom stopped wandering. It took a few years, eventually she was too confused to know how to get out. SignatureMare mfcoleman@THEOLEmindspring.com http://www.muggsmulcher.com/kstuff/a.s.a/intro.htm alt.support.alzheimers' FAQs and Stuff Pages Its a function of the brain damage, so it wouldn't really matter if she stayed home all the time or not - there is not much you can do about it. Believe it or not, a reasonable proportion of people with AD go through a phase where things look odd to them to the point where they think the people around them are imposters, or their home is an artful fake (i.e. it looks like their house but it isn't the real thing). Probably something to do with the agnosia developing, which is the the brain losing the ability to recognize objects and people. So the person can be at home and still be asking to go home - or else the home they want to go to is not the family home of 40 years, but their childhood home of 70 years ago. When my mother in law moved from the assisted living facility to a locked AD ward, she was only vaguely aware something had changed - she wasn't really sure what was different. We'd been worried about the change, but she was sufficiently confused and forgetful that I don't think she was really cogniscent of being in a different place entirely. Mary G. ditto here but I can add no suggestions. Sometimes we go and come back again. Most often I just tell her that it is home that she has memory problems but then reassure her that "it will come back to her after awhile". Sometimes she gets in a panic about it. That is when we go for a drive agian or another walk or something. Often this does not work but if she is tired enough when we come home she is willing to go in and rest a spell. After awakening, she feels better about it. Beverly > When sometimes I take my mother in my car for something e then we return > home, my mother feels uneasy and doesn't recognize her home. She becomes [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > What should I do? Never take her away form home? > J- I'm sorry to hear about your mother. My dad doesn't have AD, he's got Lewy Body Dementia, but the symptoms are much the same. Dad sometimes doesn't realize he is in his own apartment with his wife, doesn't know that the dog over there is his. He knows the dog's name, but insists that isn't her. The idea of going home is pretty common I think. Just got a call from him this morning, from his apartment, saying he was in a trailer and didn't know why, and wanted to go home. Another morning he woke up and recognized nothing about the space he was in, was very frightened over it, and it lasted several hours. Staying home probably won't help prevent this. I'm still pretty new to this too, and one thing that seems to help in our case is to just change the subject. If he's not thinking about it, he's not worrying about it. He's not always so easily distracted, but sometimes it can help. KD > When sometimes I take my mother in my car for something e then we return > home, my mother feels uneasy and doesn't recognize her home. She becomes [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > What should I do? Never take her away form home? > J- |
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