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I am sure everyone has a story to tell. I have several about the unexpected things that happen. Honestly at times you just have to laugh to keep from crying.

My dad had dementia and was pretty aggressive as well as a rabid smoker. The facility allowed smoking in the central courtyard and he would spend hours sitting out there in the shade smoking. I noticed that there was a lady in a wheel chair who hung around a lot but did not realize that it was to beg a cigarette from my dad because she was not suppose to be smoking due to breathing problems. As soon as I left she would hit him up for one and got it I guess. One day she finally rolled up while I was there and asked for one. My dad elbowed me and said "watch this". He looked at her and said "you know what you need to do" and BAM she whipped up her blouse exposed her bra-less upper body and he handed her a cigarette and she rolled off happy as she could be.
Needless to say I was caught off guard and it took me a moment to react.

I made sure the sitters stopped that going forward and went to the administrator right away to tell her so they could watch the old lady also.

Like I said....sometimes you just have to laugh so you do not cry !!!

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Very funny. A felony chatge possibly for stealing diapers!
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I never know if Mom is kidding or just saying one of her things that don't always make sense.
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Totally hilarious. Most of the time my Mom frustrates me to no end. But she will say or do something on a daily basis that makes me just have to laugh (usually because it's so ridiculous). Last night she fell asleep on the couch and I woke her up to take her upstairs to her bedroom. She has started to count everything lately so we get to about the 6th stair and she says" 28, 29 " and about 4 stairs later she says "100" and I busted out laughing.
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Jdp - I didnt mean you shouldn't have reported it, just the opposite! If I found out my mom was flashing her boobs to get a smoke and no one was doing anything about it...well, let's just say it wouldn't be pretty!!!
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I meant to say " ..... would get taken down by the cops for sure..."
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I took my dad dancing Sat. night. We take a back-pack w/ diapers, wipes, etc... wherever we go. When dad & I were on the dance floor, I noticed a man sat right next to the bag & was staring at it intensely. He seemed completely obsessed with that bag as if he thought there was something in it, he might want to have. I mentioned it to my dad & as soon as I did, I almost wished I hadn't. His face fell & he looked so fragile & exclaimed, "But, all of my stuff is in that bag!" I told him not to worry because there were two cops by the door & if he grabbed it & tried to run-- he wouldn't get taken down by the cops for sure. "Then he'd go to jail & get charged w/ stealing DIAPERS, of all things! Big score, for him, huh?" I told dad. He thought about it. Then dad just said. "Diapers. Ha. Yeah. That's what he gets." blou
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GG: Also good one! Oh for the love of pete...I guess they just didn't give a darn!
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JDP1000: That one takes the cake for funny stories! Thanks for the laugh!
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This adventure happened in 2008, five years into my husband's dementia. I wrote it up at the time to email to interested friends.
____________________________
OMG! O! O! O!

Yesterday I was in my home office when I heard a loud thump-thump-thump right outside the wall. I knew Coy was outside watering plants – what was he doing? I leaned over to raise my window shade to see what was going on, and heard Coy holler Jeanne, JEEEENEE, sounding pretty desperate.
Never mind the window shade. I flew out of the office, through the front door, and across the front lawn. I didn't see him as I rounded the corner. Coy, Coiiiiiii … I was sounding pretty desperate myself. And then I spotted his legs … just his legs. The rest of him was hanging in the egress window well, head down, butt up. (It's a big window at the back of the party room, with a crank-out window and an outside area big enough for a firefighter to fit with his or her equipment. It is maybe 6 or 7 feet deep.) His center of gravity was definitely not over ground, and he was preventing himself from landing on his head several feet below by a tight grip on one of the bar "steps" with his left hand. I imagine that we have bowling, golf, and a ton of Adrenalin to thank for the upper body strength that made that possible. "Hang on, hang on," I encouraged him. (Don't we say dumb things in crisis situations? Like he might forget to hang on if I didn't remind him.) "I was just trying to figure out what I'd do if you didn't show up," he greeted me. Hmm… now we had to figure out what to do since I did show up. "Grab my belt and pull," was his plan. He wasn't wearing a belt but I didn't have a better plan, so I planted one foot on either side of his legs, grabbed his waistband with my left hand and his right arm with my right hand, and hauled. It took a couple of tries but we got his center of gravity back over the lawn, and I had to scramble out of my straddling position so that he wouldn't wind up giving me a piggy-back ride when he stood up. Neither of us was laughing, but I'll bet it would have been a very funny video to watch.
I glanced into the abyss he had narrowly escaped entering and said, "I'll bet that little gopher thought he was going to have company." "Oh," Coy looked down too. "I didn't even notice him down there. I'd better get him out. He'll never be able to scale the straight walls. He must have fallen in." "We'll deal with the gopher later. Let's get you inside."

Remarkably Coy was none the worse for the ordeal. Minor scrapes on his left arm, a temporary pattern of rock-shaped indents on his knees, and grass stains (or rather rhubarb-leaf stains) on his shorts were the only evidence he'd had an adventure. After Coy was settled in his recliner I went back out and put a long board at a diagonal in the window well, hoping it wouldn't be too steep for the gopher to scamper up, and we went off to a Sommerfest jazz concert as planned.

I have a nice basket of flowers hanging outside my office window. We knew that watering it would be a little tricky because of its proximity to the large window well, so we bought a shower wand for the hose, allowing watering that pot from a safe distance. But Coy didn't want to bother with the hose and he was walking through the rhubarb to get next to the hanging pot, carrying a pitcher of water. Rhubarb leaves are slippery and Coy isn't always steady on his feet – a bad combination. He tripped on a rhubarb stalk, slipped on the leaves, and found himself headed down the egress well. The pitcher was still full of water when I arrived, and I watered the plant when he was safely standing. I can't quite visualize how/when he managed to set the pitcher down as he was stumbling around. I think that a video of the entire event would be quite entertaining, given that the outcome wasn't tragic.
Coy's memory isn't the greatest, but I have a feeling he'll remember the wand on the end of the hose for a while … let's hope for the rest of the summer.

By the way, adrenalin and/or hunger apparently endows gophers with remarkable balance and climbing skill. The window well was empty this morning and I removed the rescue plank.
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I have an even better story.....lol. My dad sat and smoked with another man who was in assisted living due to failing kidney's. One day they were having some sort of mother daughter day including a pretty nice buffet meal. Right in the middle of the meal came a streaker in nothing but his underwear.....who might that have been you ask....yep lucky me....it was my dad in all his glory !!!

I have to admit even the Executive Director could not keep a straight face as she explained it to me and we had a pretty good laugh. Turns out the other old guy bet him $5.00 that he wouldn't do it and the rest is history.
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Rainmom, I reported it to try and protect my dad. I was not upset, nor did I make a fuss. Just wanted it on the record in my words not someone else's. I couldn't care less if they danced around all day buck naked but, their is no way to know what the other family might say or do had they discovered it first. I learned pretty quickly playing offense was easier than defense.
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JDP1000, same here. Since I'm the caregiver I can't always see the funny side. I hate seeing Mom like this. Right now she is trying to tell me something and I have no idea since it doesn't always have anything to do with what is going on at the time. Things come out of left field. I really hate to laugh at what she does because...she is my Mom.
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Okay - I don't want to be a kill joy here but "why report them?" Really?
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ROTFLMAO! But why report them? Life is so short, with so few pleasures at their stage in life.
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Wow, Salbert. I can't even imagine that. I took care of my parents from beginning symptoms till the end for a total of approximately 16 years. I don't think I ever heard either one of them laugh, even once, at anything in all that time. I think the laughter was one of the first things to totally disappear, even before the memory or the reasoning. I would have given anything to hear them laugh again. I don't think I did much laughing either.
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LOL....I am glad you all enjoyed it. Looking back there were a lot of things that make me chuckle now. At the time I was so busy trying to hold it together I did not see the funny parts until after my dad passed. Now with my wife in the later stages of FTD Dementia I try to "enjoy" the parts that I can more and dwell on the bad things less and keep trying to hold things together.
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Thanks for my laugh of the day! I really needed it!
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JDP1000 that is hysterically so wrong! Reminded me of the story I heard years ago about my great aunt who was in a NH, I believe with a form of dementia. It seems she had a gentleman friend there, and one bright day an aide came upon the two of them, just standing side-by-side looking out her picture window at the busy traffic, both stark naked!
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I can relate to the laughter. There are many times my mom who has dementia will start laughing about something until her stomach starts to hurt. It may not even be all that funny but I get started laughing so hard I am in tears. It has been a blessing to see my mother laugh because growing up in our home she would cry a lot due to manic depression. Now she laughs at everything. It has been an honor to take care of my mom.
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Thanks for the laugh...I needed it. One funny thing about my Mom (92 w/dementia) - if we are at a doctor's appt., she will make comments about other people in the waiting room in a loud enough voice for everyone to hear and needless to say the comments are not always complimentary! She thinks she is whispering to me but her comments ring out...there's no filter and she says what I may be thinking! Have to laugh to myself in times like that. (:
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Well I have to tell you, that one cracked me up. Your right, you have to laugh to keep from crying. Mom and I play the 'who's on first' routine on a regular basis. With her getting confused, it makes for some interesting conversations!
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