Hi! I am very tired of caring for my grandma. She has been making my life miserable. Physically, she is very healthy but I don't think she is healthy in terms of mental. One thing, whenever I am at home, she will bang the door and wanted to go out. When I let her out, she scolded me for chasing her out of house. Sometimes I just don't feel like staying at home during semester break. And I noticed she keeps washing her clothes, bed sheet and everything that's in her room non-stop. Like every 30 minutes and keeps washing her hands and feet but never showered. She will yell at my dad whenever he asked her to shower. I really don't want to say it but I do hate her whenever she acted like different person in front of outsider. And she eats a lot outside but whenever at house she eats very little and I noticed she threw the food away secretly. It makes me mad when I am the one who cooked it. It is never peaceful in the house. There has been few cases of her climbing gates to get out of the house and ended up in police station. But we have no choice since all of us are working and studying. No one is at home and she refused to go to any center and we also struggled financially to hire caregiver to come to our house. Though sometimes we threatened her to behave or else we would send her to center, she never changed at all. She feels like she is a queen at our house. No one is willing to take care of her and we always bring her everywhere we go because she refused to be at home. Whenever we go for our family vacation, she will say she wanna go home and we are already there. So we don't have any personal space and place to rest and breathe. It feels awful because she sometimes keep mumbling and scolding for no reason, banging the gate like mad people. I also think she might have dementia as well. And I once saw her washing her hair using detergent powder but I can't say anything about it because she would have scold or angry about it. Because she's the kind of person who don't like people to correct her and she thinks that she is always correct. I think she also washes her hand. feet and hair very often like an obsession. After being here for more than 10 years, I think I going to have depression if the situation persists on.
I think what you are seeing is dementia and obsession compulsive disorder (OCD). I am no psychologist! But the anger, wondering around, washing hair with detergent, mumbling, change in personality and not wanting to bath sounds like dementia.
Obsess with washing her sheets and clothes, washing her hair and feet over and over sounds like OCD.
She needs to see a neurologist and/or geriatric psychiatrists.
I am sorry if I am not much help today. But rest to sure, there are people here that can point you in the right direction. We have some very knowledgeable and friendly people on this forum. That I believe can help you down the right path. Hang in there!
I feel your pain and confusion.
All I can offer right now is hugs!
Seriously, I feel your pain. I've grown to accept it, mostly, and just let it wash off my back.