Dad made it through one week before being moved to another room. We were told he was on a wait list to move from a quad to a semi-private room. But this wasn't that. He was being moved to the dementia wing - lockdown. We always knew he'd end up there at some point, but not this soon. He's 64 and completely mobile and that seemed to be the trouble.
From the moment we dropped him off, he seemed like a kid in a candy shop, exploring every square inch of the facility within the first two days. Always on the go, which we thought was a great thing. He was finding interests and things that he enjoys like shooting pool and also found the designated smoking areas without too much trouble. We felt confident that by setting him up on a routine where he has to ask the nurse's station for his cigarettes, it would prevent him from just lighting up whenever and wherever he wanted. It was working well.
It was when I called him the next morning after dropping him off that we learned something odd. At first he told me just how much he was liking it there and that he's been playing pool and met other veterans. It really warmed my heart that he was enjoying himself and wasn't asking when he was going home. But then he said that some guy told him they started serving beer around 1:00 p.m. and he was looking forward to getting a couple. We learned the hard way that he can no longer handle alcohol with his brain being the way it is. My husband and I had to carry him into his house around Christmas and he was in such bad shape, I prayed he didn't die that night on the couch. We had been vigilant in keeping him away from his beer ever since.
I thought that can't be right. They can't have a bar on the facility, can they?! I let it go, thinking it might have been one delusional resident leading another. I ran it past other family members and even a few coworkers and they all thought it wasn't worth stressing over because how could a nursing home facility serve alcohol when they've got residents on all sorts of medications or with issues that would not be able to handle drinking?
The next day, my sister took a turn to call him and she said he sounded off. Her gut instincts told her something was not right. As they talked, he again brought up the beer, telling her he had a couple while shooting pool. We think he only had a few bucks on him and probably couldn't get many, but that wasn't the point. He now knew where the beer was. He found it on the very first day there and with his OCD tendencies, it would become a regular stop in his day. And with his FTD, unable to know when to stop drinking it.
Calls were instantly made to the social worker and nursing staff where it was confirmed that they have a veteran's hall which serves beer six days a week for EIGHT hours a day! The challenge is they have a section with dormitories for residents who can live independently, and could likely handle a few beers. But there's no stopping anyone from the nursing home side from going there, too. I suspect this may not be a huge problem because most of the nursing home veterans are well into their eighties, in a wheelchair, some missing a leg. Not exactly the same as our mobile and swift, young dad.
So they put him on a "do not serve" list and told us they have police who can look out after him. We didn't exactly want him to feel punished and threatened while trying to hang out in a part of the facility that he actually enjoys. It was a mess. We decided to go see him a couple days later on the weekend to scope it out for ourselves. We found that we had to really deter him and distract him about not having beer, but the nice thing about his current personality is that he's so agreeable. He never puts up a fight about us telling him when he can't do something. So maybe this wouldn't be so bad afterall? Maybe as long as a staff member tells him no, he'll agree and forget about it? We saw how much he enjoyed walking around and playing pool that we just didn't have the heart to have him banned from that particular building.
The next day we got a call that they had to put him on a one on one order where someone had to "babysit" him all day and that he's hardly slept, if at all, for the last four days. Well, it's no wonder he's becoming unmanagable. He needs sleep! Turns out that the OCD tendencies were really ramped up and he started pestering many of the veterans for beer, cigarettes, or money to buy both. He started wandering into areas that he didn't belong, and even lit up inside an area clearly marked "no smoking". We could tell that he seemed tired and when he is, his judgement is worse and he gets more forgetful. We were starting to feel like none of the staff seemed to want to understand this disease and that it's not your general dementia. Why couldn't they simply suggest to him to go sleep?
We continued to check in on him every day, with each of us taking a turn calling his cell to see how he sounded and to remind him of what he should and shouldn't be doing. We also checked in with the nurses to see if they had anything more to report and to relay our suggestions on what works for us when managing his mind. A few days later he was moved to lockdown. It absolutely broke our hearts.
If we thought he was the youngest veteran before, he certainly was going to be now. It killed us to think about how he had a week of absolute freedom to do what he wanted and was now being reduced to a couple hallways, his room that he's sharing with the oldest resident there, and has to have a staff member at his side for every activity he would like to do, including smoking. I think they even have to light the damn cigarette for him, too. The walks he enjoyed, the pool table, the coffee club - all gone.
After a few lengthy conversations with heads of nursing and a new social worker for his new wing, we began to accept their decision. It was getting to the point that they feared for his safety as the more he pestered residents the more angry they were getting and were beginning to threaten him with physical force. It angered us that it was so unfair that the residents with most freedom, who could actually live on their own, don't have a clue about this disease, but we certainly didn't want the next phone call telling us that dad was severely injured by one of them, either.
So they will take good care of him there and they have the staff best equipped to handle dementia care. That wing has more staff per resident and more doctors than the other section, so we have to realize he's in good hands. They said they will do some cognitive therapy and see if he improves and see if maybe he settles in more and that the zoloft he was given would calm the OCD tendencies down. We've learned that he's finally getting some sleep and we hope that maybe he could move back to the nursing home side, but we won't hold our breath.
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