Watching and Cleaning is the Byword

Thursday May 22, 2008

Today was a long drawn out day for me. It started with Mr. Q giving us a hard time in the morning. He didn’t want to pay attention to our instructions. In addition he took all the equipment out of the closet. We had some walkers and a portable wheel chair in there temporarily until we could find another place to store them. Our house is filled to the brim with “stuff” and is severely short of space, even though it is not a small house.

It’s only been about a week that Mr. Q has been taking the things out of the closet. We put them back and he removes them again. They are a hazard inside his room where he puts them so we always put them back in the closet out of the way. I asked him why he kept removing them sometime later and he told me to make room for clothes. There are no clothes in the closet right now because Mr. Q cannot control himself and tries to put on several sets of clothes at a time. We have not been able to stop him so we resorted to removing all the clothes.

I’ll try to keep this real short. Mr Q wandered all day. It seemed like a hundred or more times he was back and forth around the house. For a time he was in and out, each time spitting outside coming in for a minute or two and back out again spitting on the grass or dirt like I advised him. He still has a serious spitting problem. The doctor says it is because of his medicine that controls his mind plus overactive glands.

Mr. Q pooped in his pants twice today. It was awful and frustrating because we knew he was going to do it and could not get him to stay on the toilet stool more than a minute or so. He is horrible when it comes to trying to do #2 and will not sit still long enough to ever do it. So he is almost always constipated. That and not drinking enough water and liquids almost always assures he will stay constipated. He will not pay attention to us if we tell him to remain on the stool. Its a never ending problem.

We had to give him a bath and clean him twice today because of his pooping. That was a trial by fire. A fight all the way. One person could not handle him so it was fortunate I was here. I talked with him a half hour while we waited for him to finish pooping the second time. Had he gotten up the many times he wanted to we would have had poop all over everywhere several more times. I am glad that’s over with today. Now, when is the next time? By the way, we had to give him prune juice today to help him with his constipation problem and that’s why there was a smelly problem today. It didn’t work yesterday or the day before.

He went to bed an hour and a half late today because of all the problem with him pooping and having to wait until he was finished plus cleaning him up afterward.

Mr. Q is in bed finally and the very stressful day is over. I accomplished nothing today, having to watch Mr. Q wander back and forth so many times almost non stop most of the day. He must have used up the energy of three people with his wandering today. Good night!

Note: For anyone reading this post and not the beginning, Mr. Q is diagnosed with dementia and Alzheimer’s. This is a day in the life taking care of him. We have some other residents with dementia, but one is not serious, the other is virtually totally out of it and totally incapacitated, and then there is Mr. Q.

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