Dementia in Japan: my grandparents have dementia 4 (the worst day)

The second day since she moved in my parents house, it was the worst day for us.

The day, My grandmother could not communicate from the morning. During the day, she got lost in the house, could not understand anything around her. And the night, she had urinated to rubbish bins and the carpet around the bins. 

Today I will talk about the worst day of my demented grandmother. 

It was her second day of staying at my parents' house for my grandmother. 

From the morning, she could not communicate at all. She spoke, but she just put random word together and anythings she was talking did not make sense. 

For example, she was saying like "I go fish and, TV, TV, so that TV have a eat, then bought it yesterday" 

Even I asked her if she wants something to drink like "do you want coffee?" by the simplest sentense, she answered me like "no, no, I am ah,,,, you can eat something". 

My parents' house is also not big as people get lost, however she did. She could not find bathroom even there was the bathroom right in front of her. So, I or my mother needed to guide her to the bathroom everytime she need to go bathroom. She also forgot how to wash her hands after went to bathroom. She did not recognized the handle of water faucet, she was just standing in front of the washstand for a while, and asked how to wash her hands. She also forget how to wash her face later. 

After getting lost in the home problem, she also forgot how to wash her face, brushed her teeth so many times in a day, and some other demented issues were cotinued as somebody always needed to monitor her whole day. In the night, because it was her second day and wanted to give some privacy, we closed the room she was sleeping. However, the closed door caused problem in the night. 

In the night, we did not expect her to go to bathroom so often, and fell asleep. My grandmother was quiet in the night, we did not think it is the sign of nightmare. 

For instance, she urinated to 2 rubish bins and around there. 

Next early morning, she woke up and came to the living room. She said good morning, and talked about something weird like "yeh, last night was very long, it was inconvenient, there was not bathroom, so ribish bin,, I did,,,,,,rubish bin". Then my mother asked her what did it mean, and went to the room to check what was going on. Then she noticed weird smell and urine spreading around carpet and 2 rubish bins. The urine almost reached some furnitures made from woods and had some important things inside. 

So cleaned up carpet, removed rubish bins from the room, and decided to keeo opening the door. 

Since the day, my mother and I could not sleep very well night because if something noise come from her room, we had to check her. 

Well, these are the nightmare for us and the day we decided to think about to use nursing home program for her. 

The reasons of her dementia symptoms got worse are probably following things; 

1, changed environment: it was the second day since she moved in to my parents house where is not so familiar to stay for her 

2, room was closed and she did not recognized the door as door: after everything happened, she told us she thought she was closed in the room.

3, originally her dementia was worse than we expected: at first we thought my grandfather's dementia is more serious than her, however it was probably misunderstood ( I will introduce the reason we thought my grandfather's dementia was worse in another blog later) 

4, she was nervous because of different environment, new life style, and new people to stay with 

5, the room was not enough organized as there are some of my mother's and my clothese and some other stuffs (we should have prepared her unexpected actions and behaviour) 

What we learn from the day; 

1, keep opening doors and possibly light on especially bathroom

2, cleaned and organized stuff in the room she is sleeping just in case if she did something

3, wake up and check when she made noise during night time

4, put some sign on the bathroom's door 

From the next day, she seems that she got used to stay in my parents apartment and we got used to live with her, so problem can be avoided most of the times.