This is not a huge deal, and it is not that bothersome but - does anyone know how to get someone with dementia to move past a story?
FIL will get his mind stuck on a story and might go off on a tangent but keeps coming back to the same story. He told us one yesterday that he repeated 20 times in a row. It was clear the way he told it, that he thought he was telling it the first time.
We tried asking questions about it so he could really exhaust the story, but his mind would reset and he would tell it again. We’ve tried redirecting him to other stories, but he kept coming back to it. His segues were amazing... his story was about his ancestor being shot but no matter what story we brought up, he kept coming back to it.
It’s not particularly bothersome for us, but I am curious if this is a normal thing for dementia. He will sometimes follow us from room to room telling the story. I’m glad he has some memories so that is a good thing. We never tell him “you just told us that”, because I think it makes him feel bad, but my young nieces and nephews say things like that to him and it’s kind of sad. He will clam up and not say anything else. I’d rather him repeat a story than go silent.
One thing that is hard is his trying to find words to describe things. He gets so frustrated trying to come up with the word and frustrated with us for not figuring out what he means. Yesterday, he kept telling us he wanted us to find his map... we had no clue... after an hour we determined he must be talking about his family tree poster...
Without short term memory, the dementia patient has no way to retain what story they've just told. To keep up their end of a conversation they'll rummage through what memories they can still access, usually picking out one that has managed to 'stick' because it has meaning to them. Unfortunately, it can be the same memory over and over. Every once in a while my Mom will throw in some new detail, so that's nice. I try to get more details from her about her family (how tall? What color eyes?), but it can be impossible to get the needle to skip to the next track on the record most of the time.
He scored 5/30 on his last dementia screen so he has definitely worsened over the past year. More and more, he speaks total gibberish so anytime we can get a clear story from him it is a godsend, even if we have heard it over and over.