# When Alzheimers turns mean **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 27, 2019, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-alzheimers-turns-mean/833137 "2019-04-27T17:52:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2019, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-alzheimers-turns-mean/833137/41 "2019-05-02T12:55:11Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > What kind of plan? … Euthanasia - legal or otherwise. I have 3 people who love me enough to have promised to assist me should i ever get to that point. 1 is my contemporary, and 2 of them are young enough that they are very likely to outlive me. My choice - obviously not for everybody. And I apologize if this is too much of a digression from the OP. ---
**Author:** ![Jasmine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jasmine/32/2964_2.png) [@Jasmine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jasmine)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2019, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-alzheimers-turns-mean/833137/42 "2019-05-02T13:14:55Z")
This is a heartbreaking thread. For those of you going through the torture of watching someone you love mentally disintegrate before your eyes, I can only offer my heartfelt sympathy. It’s horribly painful, and I’m just so sorry. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2019, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-alzheimers-turns-mean/833137/43 "2019-05-02T14:56:22Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > I’m not convinced that making a joke in a serious thread is jerkish. I suspect it’s more likely to make people smile than to offend them since it isn’t mocking anybody involved. Agreed. Having gone through this with a close family member, jokes were an important way to keep sanity and perspective. ---
**Author:** ![Tapiotar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3be4f8/32.png) [@Tapiotar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapiotar)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2019, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-alzheimers-turns-mean/833137/44 "2019-05-02T15:30:25Z")
> [@DummyGladHands](#): > > Thanks, Colibri, she’s on anti-depressives, when they can make her take them (we often find sucked on pills on the floor of her room at the facility.) I know it’s the disease progression but it’s making me not want to be around her and that makes me feel like an enormous shit. You are not a shit, you are a \*\*good \*\*person for continuing to visit her. Do you have a support system for yourself? Some comfort for yourself? It sounds like it’s time to stop taking her out. When my father was in a facility and screaming at us when we visited, the nurses at the facility could see how stressed we were, and told us not to come as often. He was happier and got along better there when we weren’t there. (We would sometimes come at unexpected times so we could see how he was treated. It was a good place.) I am so grateful that my mother does not have dementia, is still sweet and loving, and can still be at home. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2019, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-alzheimers-turns-mean/833137/45 "2019-05-02T16:28:06Z")
> [@Dinsdale](#): > > I think threads like this should spur those of us in the caretaking generation to plan ahead for our dotage. My parents died relatively young. My MIL never turned mean like the OP describes, but spent her last several years awfully incompetent. Personally, I have no desire to ever exist like that, or to have MY kids think of me and have to care for me the way my MIL’s kids did. I’m unlikely to get old age dementia (in my family it’s normal to be demented, but from birth), but I’ve got my will written down even though what it says is exactly the same as the legal default for my location: getting the will recorded cost less than €50 and it will save my relatives several months of probate when the time comes. My close relatives and I all know each other’s attitudes regarding heroic life-saving measures and stuff like that; I don’t have a spouse and it’s possible that I’ll survive both of my brothers, but just in case they know my opinion. I think it is important to put as much down in a legal form as your own jurisdiction allows, because it can really simplify things at times which are already hard enough without adding authorization issues on top. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2019, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-alzheimers-turns-mean/833137/46 "2019-05-02T16:55:33Z")
> [@Dinsdale](#): > > Euthanasia - legal or otherwise. I have 3 people who love me enough to have promised to assist me should i ever get to that point. 1 is my contemporary, and 2 of them are young enough that they are very likely to outlive me. My choice - obviously not for everybody. > > And I apologize if this is too much of a digression from the OP. I understand that. The problem as I pointed out is that if it happens you likely won’t realize it and even probably deny it. And your loved one won’t kill you against your will at this point. And before it happens, you don’t really have a reason to die just in case it would turn for the worst later, right? There’s also the fact that it’s easier to think now that you’ll make sure to pass away in time than it might be to implement the plan when time comes even assuming that you still have enough sanity to do so. You might find yourself much more reluctant to actually die than you are now that it’s only an hypothetical situation in a distant future. ---
**Author:** ![Mundane\_Super\_Hero](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mundane_super_hero/32/6304_2.png) [@Mundane\_Super\_Hero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mundane_Super_Hero)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2019, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-alzheimers-turns-mean/833137/47 "2019-05-02T17:18:41Z")
> [@DummyGladHands](#): > > It’s getting so bad, I don’t want to be around her. I know the rules, distract, deflect, change the subject. I carry the cards to explain her behavior to others, servers, clerks in the stores, etc. > But now I am the target. Screaming at me in restaurants, blaming me for weird assed shit, hating every little sweet anecdote I tell her about…I know there are others among us dealing with this. Any hints to not take it personal, end up yelling and then hating myself for days or hours? My sympathies; I’ve been there… and although at the time she was bed ridden, there was a limit that I could take before I had to leave the hospital room. Yes, it gets that bad (the OP knows). I don’t have an answer other than I had to know my limits and know when I had to leave the room. I would like to ask another question though. She has Alzheimer’s? Was she also a heavy smoker? The big buzz-word now is ‘COPD’… where the lungs get so damaged the brain suffers from a lack of oxygen and the cells slowly die off leaving the victim in a constant state of confusion, pain, and screaming Hell. Is it possible that it is a combination? I know that it is a gruesome and disgusting question, but some of our elderly relatives were stupid enough to smoke but healthy enough to skip lung cancer… so it is a valid question. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2019, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-alzheimers-turns-mean/833137/48 "2019-05-02T17:33:07Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > I’m unlikely to get old age dementia (in my family it’s normal to be demented, but from birth), Now that people of my generation have elderly parents, I unfortunately realized that most people, past say 85, even if they don’t suffer strictly speaking from Alzheimer or such diseases, go through a severe deterioration of their mental faculties. It’s not necessarily blatantly obvious from the outside, since they can manage to act and talk mostly normally in casual situations, with maybe some oddities easily excused because of their advanced age, while behind the scenes they’re turning into mean people, unable to follow the simplest reasoning and overwhelmed by paranoïa. The brain deteriorates for many reasons even in the absence of a clearly defined disease or as a result of normally unrelated medical issues (for instance, a coworker’s mother never recovered mentally from a simple bout of anemia). I think now that it’s almost a given (there are some exception, of course) that if you live past 85, your intellectual abilities will be severely compromised. > [@](#): > > but I’ve got my will written down even though what it says is exactly the same as the legal default for my location: getting the will recorded cost less than €50 and it will save my relatives several months of probate when the time comes. My close relatives and I all know each other’s attitudes regarding heroic life-saving measures and stuff like that; I don’t have a spouse and it’s possible that I’ll survive both of my brothers, but just in case they know my opinion. But many people who suffer from dementia and such don’t have any other major medical issue that would require “heroic life-saving measures”, so having made your opinion clear on this topic won’t help you when it comes to Alzheimer or dementia. Also, my elder’s brother death made me realize that things aren’t necessarily clear-cut. He spent the 4 last months of his life essentially being kept alive by heroic life-saving measures, while he was conscious to an unclear extent, but unable to communicate. First, we never were asked to make a decision on his behalf until the very end, and even then we were rather asked to validate the decision made by doctors. But more importantly, his doctors were unable to give any prediction. He could live or die. If he lived, he could have severe physical disabilities. Or none at all. And severe mental disabilities. Or none at all. He could survive only in a vegetative state. Or in great shape. And they couldn’t tell what was more likely. He was 62. How do you make a decision in such a situation, even assuming you’re asked to? (For the record my brother died essentially from an ordinary lung infection, like most of us have almost every winter. Except that he wouldn’t see a doctor. A 5 days course of antibiotics would have prevented his untimely death and what has been essentially four months of agony. Go see your doc when you’re ill.) ---
**Author:** ![carnut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnut/32/3531_2.png) [@carnut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnut)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2019, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-alzheimers-turns-mean/833137/49 "2019-05-02T17:46:09Z")
She needs a doctor to look at her medications and re-evaluate. She probably also needs to not leave the facility. Upsetting the daily routine can be a trigger for some people with senility. It can make them very happy, or it can set them off the other way. I suspect that your mom still knows on some level that the care facility is not good or perhaps she is merely fighting the reason she is there. Perhaps you can look into switching facilities? It’s just a thought. Regarding any new medications. Beware the psychotic/anti-psychotics. My dad was fighting caregivers in his first place so they stuck him on Haldol, which turned him into this crabbed, hallucinating zombie that was not at all like my father. We moved him, got him off the meds and he became sweeter than I ever remember him being before. Though at a total loss for words, he was, in some ways, his best self. DGH, don’t doubt yourself. You are going through hell and you must keep going to come out the other side. Know that you have the support of everyone here. ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2019, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-alzheimers-turns-mean/833137/50 "2019-05-02T18:08:48Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > I understand that. … I’d be happy to discuss with you my thoughts for the end of my life, but I fear it would extend the hijack of this thread. ---
**Author:** ![WildBlueYonder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ce7236/32.png) [@WildBlueYonder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WildBlueYonder)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2019, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-alzheimers-turns-mean/833137/51 "2019-05-02T18:40:01Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > When she needs to go into a nursing home (not the same as assisted living, but you probably already know that), Medicaid will pick up the tab. If she makes too much money to qualify for Medicaid, Florida has some arrangement where you can give the extra income to a trust of some sort. (A few years ago, I could’ve quoted chapter and verse to you on this, but now I’d have to ask my wife later on; it’s her grandmother that was in that situation.) I’ll check that out with my sister-thanks > [@Gatopescado](#): > > Are you sure she’s just not trying to get out of Florida? Her actions seem rational to me. 😉 She thinks she still lives in Michigan…so wants to go to Florida now? Youre so funny!! 😃 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-alzheimers-turns-mean/833137.md?page=2)