Driving evaluation ordered for mom with early signs of dementia. Do I have to take her keys?
We went for my moms neuro re-check appointment (she did not remember meeting the doctor). I had my 82 year old mom move in with us and I can clearly see that her memory has declined more than I thought. She was masking very well when she was familiar with everything and everything in her house had been the same for 20 years. We are in a new city and she is directionally challenged. We purposely purchased a home close to everything she would need. Everything is literally .5 mile to 5 miles. She is using a paper map and the compass in her car for directions. She has sticky notes all over her front dash. She told me yesterday she gets honked at because she is trying to figure out where she is. I asked her if she would be open to a large Garmin that I could program and all she would have to do is press the place she wanted to go and it would give her a big visual map and verbally tell her where to go. She said she is fine with her paper map and her compass. Her dementia is very early stage. She has refused the PET scan and bloodwork to see if its Alzheimer's. She is on the medications that treat both, so I do not force the tests. I feel like I am rambling, but what I need to know is how did you get your parent to do the driving evaluation and if she fails, is the state notified to revoke her license? Do I have to take her keys away and have her be mad at me for making her take the test? I don't want her to feel trapped in the house but I also am worried about her safety and possibly getting lost or hit by another driver while doing random u-turns or reading a map and driving. Thanks.
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Mom's going to get worse, and don't be surprised when she starts getting mad at you about a lot of things now. It's the nature of the disease. Yes, you have to stop her driving, whatever it takes. RIGHT NOW.
My brother-in-law was killed by an impaired driver at age 49. BIL was survived by my sister, four children and a grandchild who never got to know him. If you don't stop mom from driving, could you live with knowing that a beautiful family was destroyed because you didn't want mom to get mad at you? Because she was only "very early stage dementia?" Please do the right thing.
Sometimes, it is necessary to "trick" our loved ones when they do not recognize their cognitive decline. Some people will disable the car, change out the keys, or simply make them disappear. I would disable it. That way, she can try to start it and find it does not work, then I would "take it to the repair shop" permanently.
We use therapeutic lies or as I like to call them "strategic truths" to work with our loved ones with dementia. Things like "you have to stay until the Dr. says you can go home" or "the doctor hasn't released you to drive yet" are the sorts of things I say. In my case, a doctor is not going to release my mom to go home because I am the decision maker and she needs to stay where she is safe.
It's not always worth a battle of trying to make them understand because their broken brain cannot understand why they can't do something when they are, in their own mind, perfectly fine. I never tell my mother anything that will cause an argument because I can't win when she is not playing with the full deck so to speak.
You know your mother and what she will or will not accept so I say whatever gets her off the road where she is endangering herself and others is the right thing.
But there's a difference between "hard" and "something I'd never forgive myself for," and if my mother had kept driving when she could no longer drive safely and she had harmed someone else, I would never forgive myself. I would bear as much responsibility or more for the harm, because of knowing that she presented a danger and that I had not done what I could to stop her.
You need to take her car away TODAY. Right now is good, yesterday was better and when this started would have been best.
Are you really going to stand by and watch her kill an innocent person?
I think that you know that.
Many of us don't understand how ill our loved ones are until a traffic accident happens and that lets us know. It was that way for me and I got "the call" from a hospital, not the coroner or the police; so that was lucky. My brother was very smashed up and his truck totaled, but no one else was hurt because as it happens he was driving between a massive dumpster and a sturdy palm tree, over and over and over again. Later he admitted he knew he was making poor decisions. It was our introduction to his new diagnosis of probable early Lewy's dementia.
Take steps now to take the keys and the car from your mother. This will be only the first of many things you will soon be in complete charge of. If you are not already POA and have no yet seen an elder law attorney this is the time to do so. As well as getting doctors assistance to tell your mother her driving days are now over.
Yes, as her only child, and only living relative, I am her POA and HPOA. I have been for years. I noticed her decline and took her to get evaluated earlier this year (she fought me hard on that!) and she has dementia and maybe Parkinson’s. We blended our family home and purchased a new home that has two full separate living areas. This has not been an easy transition for either of us. Both of us giving up our larger homes and all the things.
I am a fixer, people pleaser, avoid conflict kind of person. I told her we would wait until after the holiday to do the driving testing. She won’t use technology that could help her in many areas like an auto feeder for her cat, better medication storage. Everything feels like a battle.
I am afraid her driving being taken away will set off WW3. I 1000% don’t want her in an accident. I’m a medical case manager for catastrophic losses working for an attorney and I see this everyday. That’s what is so hard for me. I KNOW.
Thank you for your gentle response and all the others that confirmed what I know to be true.
With Gratitude,
Dizzy Deb
P.S. there are no meds that successfully "treat" dementia.
I had to learn to accept his illness. I went through, and still sometimes do, a mourning process. I let him be who he is and accept my responsibility for him in the state he is in. If he were in his right mind he would want me to make sure he's safe, and that he doesn't hurt any adult or child. In his right mind he would be devastated if he hurt or killed someone. Don't sugar coat it. Learn to tell those little white lies if you worry about her getting angry. Realize that you have a responsibility to the public especially now that you are fully aware of the potential of her driving a 5 thousand pound weapon!
drivers license nonrenewal for medical reasons [name of your state]
You should get results for your state's DMV or DOT processes.
Tough tooties and too bad so sad