Dementia in Japan: my grandparents have dementia (The day our family decided to send my grandfather to a nursing home)

Today's talk is about the day when our family decided to send my grandfather to a nursing home and bring my grandmother to our home.

-My grandparents' life before  

-What made us to decide? 

-How?

-Duration

Before my grandmother moved in 

My grandparents were living with a cat at 40mins driving distance from the apartment I live now. They had exercise class for senior twice a week, and people called "helper" who support their daily life.  The helpers give advises about demented people's care to the family. 

Firstly, my grandparents do not like new experience. They do not like to try foods that they have not tried before. Particularly my grandmother does not like to communicate with people who she does not know. 

Secondly, here are some problematic behaviours of my grandparents. They have a cat but do not train her at all. They always give whatever she wants such as seafood instead of dried food, whenever she looks hungry they feed. If she claws wall, just let her does. They says it is because that she looks cute/pity. I also heard that they often feed cats/pigeon outside even it is banned and told not to because of some reasons. I assume that there are some problem with their life style.

Thirdly, when my grandparents' dementia getting serious, grandmother often tried to kick her husband out from their apartent beacuse she forgot who he is. She often called to my mother and told like "there is a man in the house, I do not know him, it is scary". Everytime she called my mother, she needed to explain who he is, but my grandmother did not try to believe. One day, the day we seriously began to consider their moving out, my grandfather strangled her neck. When my parents went to grandparents' apartment (they went to grandparents' apartment every 3-5days to care), they saw my grandfather was strangling my grandmother's neck. He said it is because that she tried to blame and kick him out from the apartment. 

Forthly, we often had received phone call from grandparents' neighbours. They told us that my grandparents always break some neighbour rules such as about garbage disposal. Also, when my grandmother forgot about her husband, she went to neighbours and asked help. After we received these messages from the neighbours, we decided to make movement as soon as possible. From my grandmother's dementia got serious to their moving out, it took less than 1 year. 

So, we talked to care-manager who has helped us since last year, and desiced to send my grandfather who looked more seriously demented and had problematic behaviour like strangling grandma's neck, and because she looked that she only had memory problem, we moved her into our apartment.