JOAN’S BLOG – THUR/FRI., JANUARY 19/20, 2012 – WAY TOO MUCH TIME ON THEIR HANDS

There have been many discussions on the message boards concerning Alzheimer’s Disease and obsessive behavior. Many of your spouses’ have obsessed over watches, wallets, food, guns, cigarettes, and alcohol. Up until my recent experience with this behavior, I have agreed that it is just another weird symptom of Alzheimer’s Disease.

However, considering what has been going on in my house lately, my purely unscientific opinion is that my AD husband’s obsessions are caused by him having “way too much time on his hands”. This excess of unstructured time allows him to obsess on every one of his body aches, pains, and natural functions. This is not to say he does not have pain from all of his physical ailments – diabetes, arthritis, neuropathy, the list goes on.  He does, but the recently prescribed narcotic patch and a variety of pain pills ease it. That is not to say all of those narcotics are not causing a slowdown in his inner plumbing. They are. HOWEVER, when we are home together, and he has nothing to do but watch TV, the obsessiveness related to these ailments is unrelenting. With every movement, he whines, yells, and complains. Every bathroom visit ends in an irritable, crabby, whine and complaint. All day long. Obsessive.

Making the situation worse is that he does not realize nor remember that he is doing it. Telling him to “knock it off already” is as much a waste of breath as arguing with him. With Alzheimer’s Disease, the reasoning, memory, and awareness buttons are permanently broken.  

That leaves the harried caregiver (in this case – ME) little options. So far, I have tried sympathy and understanding, which is decreasing as the obsessiveness increases; the “knock it off” approach; gritting my teeth; pulling my hair out; and losing my temper. Ignoring him does not work. He obsessively complains that I am not listening to him. Nothing works……………except keeping him busy.

Yes, my fellow spousal caregivers…….when he is at the Alzheimer’s Activity Program, both he and the staff have told me that he does not complain about his pain, nor does he obsess about his bathroom visits. He told me himself that they keep him too busy for him to think about it.

As soon as he gets into the car when I pick him up from the program, the whining and complaining begin again. He does not stop all night long, sitting in his lounger, whining that he cannot get up to get a drink; that he cannot get up to come to the dinner table; that he cannot reach the remote on the end table. I fully understand that his Alzheimer’s Disease has caused him to regress to childlike behavior, and that all of this complaining is to elicit sympathy and attention from “Mommy” (Me).

Besides making sure his pain and bathroom issues are addressed with the proper medication and pain clinic visits, my only option to curb the obsessiveness is to make sure he does not have “too much time on his hands”. Instead of sitting in front of the TV for 14 hours a day, his schedule is now full. He attends his Alzheimer Buddies dominoes game on Monday; stretch class and PT on Tuesday; Activities Center on Wednesday; PT on Thursday; Activities Center on Friday; social visits with couples friends on Saturday; and rest on Sunday.

He has almost no memory of what he does at the Activities Center.  He forgets what he did in PT. He forgets who the PT is. That is to be expected with Alzheimer’s Disease. The point is that he enjoys his exercises and activities while he is doing them, and for that amount of time, he is not engaged in obsessive behavior.

I cannot say that a full schedule will solve your spouses’ obsessive behavior. It is certainly worth a try. I can only say that is what works for us.

MESSAGE BOARD: Joan's Blog (1/19/12) - Way Too Much Time on Their Hands.

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