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My wife and I have been caring for her mother in her home for about 3.5 months now. MIL has vascular dementia and congestive heart failure after a seizure and stoke just after Christmas. She did a couple of months in a NH and then we brought her to her home and have been living in a "guest" bedroom 24/7. This morning the Hospice Nurse came at about 8:30, the visit went well after a strange sundowner's last night (that's another story). Later, my wife fixed eggs, fruit salad, and bacon for her mother for breakfast, put pepper on the eggs (which she loves) and left the pepper container on her tray in case she wanted more pepper. . A little while later we heard coughing and discovered that she had poured the whole container of black pepper into an empty juice glass and was trying to drink the pepper! lol ( in a perverse way) Won't let her pepper her own food in the future!

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mum puts butter in the bread bin? we are going through alot of butter? the weirdest thing? putting bath towels into the toilet? eating with her hands? takes her teeth OUT to eat steak? hides her teeth in sugar bowls? puts used depends into the washing machine? how weird can we get here and mums early stages????? but hey shes scoring 28/30 in her memory tests so praise the lord!!! Amen!
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Dad [92] was in the hospital over night after a nasty fall on his driveway, EMT brought him in early yesterday afternoon... he's ok now but a bit loopy from whatever meds he was given.

Anyway, he was sitting in his hospital room all dressed ready to leave.... I knew we needed to wait for the RN to bring in the discharge papers.... Dad wanted to leave so he said he wanted to go to the "check out desk".... "ah, Dad, we aren't in a hotel".

Methink what prompted the idea of a hotel was because the hospital had a hand towel folded into a swan shape on the bed table..... a placard note saying who had cleaned the room prior to him coming into the hospital room... and a menu similar to a fine dining restaurant saying what the meals were for the week. There was even one of those thin paper sheets wrapped around the toilet seat to let you know it was clean and no one had used the toilet before you did. The main lobby of this hospital looks like a hotel as it is 3 stories tall atrium, and there is a grand piano.

Then later, Dad was still waiting to be discharged from the hospital, he wanted his wallet because he needed his credit card. Credit card? "Why, Dad"? Well, he wanted to pay the hotel bill :)
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Tell me about it Movingup! Then add glaucoma to it.. Yikes..
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I was reading that dementia affects how visual information from the eyes is processed by the brain in a major way. The brain can no longer handle a full range of input and so the range of vision narrows and the dementia sufferer develops tunnel vision. Eventually visual signals from one eye will be ignored totally by the brain so only one eye will be functional, even though the abandoned eye itself is OK. Then the sufferer loses depth vision and has trouble telling flat pictures from three-dimensional objects.

I heard of one old gent in a nursing home who was discovered watering his bedspread with a watering can. The spread had flowers on it and he seemed to think they were real. I found this very strange until I found out about the loss of depth vision dementia patients suffer.
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Some days it's doesn't seem silly - Only weird.....
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Dementia sure does make a person act in 'strange' ways. Just a reminder ---we can't comment on how strange things are to the person doing them! My 'weird' moment? Watching someone try to put jello on their saltine cracker, obviously, she thought it was jam! Then another time, the only beverage at the table setting was orange juice. I still wonder how cereal tastes with OJ on it!
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