My 81 year old husband is continually checking and rechecking things that don’t matter. Any advice?

My mom did this for a bit. Basically when I first moved her in she was high strung and endlessly checking to make sure she did everything (like paying bills, then where are my keys / where are my spares, is my car out there? Go look at my car. Is it out there? etc.) Ativan caused a HUGE paradoxal rxn in her instead of relieving the anxiety -- which got me into reading about dementia and meds that can cause the symptoms to get worse.

So then I then on top of stopping the ativan we stopped all of the anti-cholergenic meds (her pulminologist had her on 3 allergy meds and she also had 2 nasal inhalers, all of which never seemed to do anything to stop her complaints). She and I actually discussed that as she was coming out of the horror-fog the ativan had her on and she said, "That's IT. Enough of these meds. Pull all the bad ones off. And also get rid of the Raloxifene. I'm not going to outlive osteoporosis." (that's my momma <3)

Since then, with being able to sleep thanks to the morphine (for the past couple of years she's not been able to sleep for more than an hour at a time), she's SO MUCH BETTER the past couple of days. The earthquakes in the house feel over thank god cause I was going to die from lack of sleep <3

As she is on hospice for COPD, her issues could have just been "dementia-like". But yeah. The only thing that I was able to do to stop that stuff, I listed above, and did all with confirming with hospice and her dr FIRST

OCD, and it’s stressful to watch. But if he derives comfort from this behavior, no need to try to convince him not to do it. I hope you can get anxiety meds for him. A big concern at this point is that you realize that he’s not able to be the companion he once was for you. That’s so frustrating. Very sorry, OP, but there’s a lot of adjustment a caregiver has to make. I wish you luck as you and your husband move forward with this horrible disease.

My mom would do exactly the same thing, when her dementia really started to take hold.

Before bed, she would make, and remake her bed, trying to get the blankets just right.

She would check and recheck that she had unplugged the computer and the lamps, and anything else she could find, to try and keep them from spontaneously combusting.

Meds helped to calm this OCD down, along with advancement of her dementia. Now, she’s not QUITE so paranoid.

This is part of Dementia, its called OCD. Not sure if anxiety meds help. Someone else will be able to help.