Does mom take any medication for pain? If she is under-medicated, constant movement can be a symptom of uncontrolled pain. Doctors are often stingy with 'the good stuff' with seniors because they're afraid of their falling. Me? I'd take that risk for my dementia'd mom if the alternative was intractable pain.
Aside from that possibility, does the memory care unit have scheduled activities that they try to include her in? In Illinois, memory care units are required to have EIGHT different activities every day...do they have a great room with a big TV? A nursing home where mom had her rehab used their very large dining room as a great room all day long...for activities, had a large 60" TV on all day...had a CD player for an hour of peppy music, etc, etc.
When I toured their memory care unit in anticipation of admitting mom, there was a lady right be the nurse's station set up with a metal work table and folding chair. On the table top was a laundry basket with unfolded laundry. Mostly towels. She was folding them. The tour guide said when she finished folding them, one of the staff thanked her profusely, took the laundry basket out of site...ruffled the towels and brought her "more things to fold." Happy as a clam. All day long. God bless her. Even now getting all misty.
In the end, we often don't really know why a person with dementia is doing a certain thing over and over. If she's been religiously offered alternatives and yet wheeling thru the halls remains her bliss? *shrug* ...More things in heaven and earth...
Sounds like your Mom is bored and in a nursing home, usually they don't have great dementia care; additional staff to re-direct behaviors and to engage them in other activities when they get fixated or anxious. But if she isn't anxious, and they don't have these caregiving features, it's not all bad that she is moving around in her wheelchair doing something. It's meaningless to us, but it's keeping her calm, it would seem.
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Aside from that possibility, does the memory care unit have scheduled activities that they try to include her in? In Illinois, memory care units are required to have EIGHT different activities every day...do they have a great room with a big TV? A nursing home where mom had her rehab used their very large dining room as a great room all day long...for activities, had a large 60" TV on all day...had a CD player for an hour of peppy music, etc, etc.
When I toured their memory care unit in anticipation of admitting mom, there was a lady right be the nurse's station set up with a metal work table and folding chair. On the table top was a laundry basket with unfolded laundry. Mostly towels. She was folding them. The tour guide said when she finished folding them, one of the staff thanked her profusely, took the laundry basket out of site...ruffled the towels and brought her "more things to fold." Happy as a clam. All day long. God bless her. Even now getting all misty.
In the end, we often don't really know why a person with dementia is doing a certain thing over and over. If she's been religiously offered alternatives and yet wheeling thru the halls remains her bliss? *shrug* ...More things in heaven and earth...
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