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Worriedspouse Asked November 2017

Do ALL people with dementia eventually forget when to use the toilet?

Number one is manageable, but number 2 is much much more stressful. Do all people with dementia end up soiling their pants?

Worriedspouse Nov 2017
Your mother AND husband had dementia. Wow, double whammy.

jeannegibbs Nov 2017
That is a good article BB referred you to. Those stages apply only to Alzheimer's Dementia. AD accounts for more than half of all dementia cases (~60%) but that leaves a lot of dementia cases that don't follow this pattern.

Neither my mother nor my husband had Alzheimer's. Their symptoms did not follow the 7 stages identified for AD.

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BarbBrooklyn Nov 2017
With regard to your husband's aphasia: my mom had that too, and it was quite confounding to try to figure out what was memory loss and what was inability to get out words. Frankly, I wouldn't "quiz" him as I imagine he's frustrated enough!

With regard to Dementia and memory skills, the thing I like to remember is that Dementia is more about cognitive loss and less about memory for a lot of people. It's about not being able to sequence the order in which things need to get done --my mom would try to put on her outerclothes first, rather than underwear, for example.

Saying a word (your name, a country) on its own as opposed to picking from a list? Which is easier, an essay question or a multiple choice question?

cwillie Nov 2017
Most of us are creatures of habit when it comes to out bowels and tend to go at the same time every day, so one secret to cleaning up fewer messes is to figure out his normal routine and get him on the toilet at those times.

Worriedspouse Nov 2017
The article BarbBrooklyn sent is great. My husband has aphasia, so it is difficult for him to find words to say anything. But i sometimes wonder how much he actually forgets. For example, if I asked him to tell me my name, he could not say it. But if I gave him 4 names and one of them was mine, he would pick the right one. Same go with seasons and cities. Is that memory loss or problem with memory recall? Dunno.

Worriedspouse Nov 2017
BarbBrooklyn - yes, he is home now. He goes to adult day care during the day while I am at work. A caregiver gets him up and ready in the morning and drives him to the care center and picks him up in the afternoon before I get home. He can still do a lot of things himself but many of the personal things that we all do for ourselves are slowly escaping him, such as taking a shower and remembering to wash his hands after using the toilet.

BarbBrooklyn Nov 2017
https://www.agingcare.com/articles/stages-of-alzheimers-disease-118964.htm

The above is a link to a helpful Agingcare article about the stages of dementia and what to expect.

Worried, do I recall that you recently brought your husband home from Assisted Living? Do you have help coming in to assist?

jeannegibbs Nov 2017
My husband never forgot about using the toilet. It was more a matter of the signal getting from his bladder to his brain in time to get to the toilet. He remembered about using the toilet even on hospice. He had a bedside commode.

I don't think my mother ever "forgot" about using the toilet either. It might have been easier on everyone if she'd just go in her depends, because it was a two-person job to transfer her from the wheelchair to the toilet, but that went on to the very end.

In dementia, incontinence is not always about "forgetting" -- though I imagine it often is.

Worriedspouse Nov 2017
Right now, my husband can still use the toilet for number 2 and half of time for number 1. He is at home and uses Depend. But I cringe about the day number 2 shoe will one drop.

Sunnygirl1 Nov 2017
I don't know the answer to your question. From what I have read on the stages of dementia, eventually, that will happen. It happened to my LO pretty early in her dementia. She doesn't even know when she's going now. She is in MC and I am not aware of anyone in her unit is not incontinent. It is stressful. Are you providing all the caregiving? If so, that's a tough thing to do alone. Can you get some help?

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