Oh, how I've come to dread evenings...all evenings. It starts in the early evening and goes until I can get DH to sleep. He wants to go home. I tell him we are home and he says he knows it, but he wants to go home. He had to quit driving about three years ago and he asks over and over if I have a car. He begs me to take him home, he cries and says he doesn't really want to leave me but he has to go home to his wife. He gets mad when I have to say I can't take him. He then says, fine, he will just walk home. So far he hasn't gone outside (he has developed a fear of the dark). But he rants about how I really don't understand and don't care about him if I can't take him home. Often he tries to use the phone to call home to have someone come get him. It just goes on and on every evening. I know it is part of the AD but it doesn't make it any easier. Some nights it is all I can do to keep from yelling at him. I think this is harder on me than the "poop patrol'".
Have you asked your DH where home is? He may be refering to someplace he lived in the past such as his boyhood home. Asking to go home is common, but they are often refering to someplace other than their present home. As their memory impairment progresses they will forget the people they see everyday and begin to search for those in their past. They may begin looking for their parents and other members of the family who are deceased or persons they knew years ago.
It sounds like your DH may be sundowning, the Neurologist can prescribe some medication that will help.
i went through this the entire winter at least 3 hours a night every night, no amount of aruging made him stop so i would tell him later on i am busy right now, he would get so mad at me, i put child safty knobs on the door knobs he couldn`t work them, keep him in. i don`t think he understood where home was anymore, maybe childhood home i don`t know all i know is it drove me crazy and i would at times get so angry with him, he would tell me many times your not my wife and then turn around and call me honey, dang illness. he is now in a home and still wants to go home, says i don`t love him anymore, asked me last visit if i wanted a divorce most of the time he don`t know we are married, strange. hang in there, my dh got so mad at me one time he tried to get out the door in the dead of winter, was some yelling and shoving going on but i was not about to let him go out that door.i know what you are going through.
I have the same problem. For the last 6 evenings sundowners has occurred and about to get the best of me. She wants to go home, please take me home. I want to die, I'm going to kill myself, no one loves me, crying most of the time. She can't sit still and will walk the house. I finally get her in the car and go driving thinking it will satisfy her but then wants to go back home. As soon as we get back in the house she starts again wanting to go home. I checked with the Dr. and he said to increase her Seroquel, I did but so far has not helped. Does anyone know of a medicine that will help this condition? For some reason she usually starts about 4 and settles down around 7 or 8 and we make it the rest of the night okay.
a sleep aide may be in order at sundowning around 5pm? i gave my DH zyprexa but it knocked him out -i know there are milder things now out there. i used melatonin as well sometimes. my DH would leave the hous and i would have to get into the car and go after him, and coax-beg him back into the car at NITE! if he had a 5min start earlier i probably couldnt find him. he was an escape artist, thus the keyed deadbolts! he wanted to hitchhike back home of course... they will start leaving if you dont secure the doors friends, be safe get doors with safety knobs so they cant walk out. and esp while driving they can open doors at the most inopportune timing..ie freeways! childlocks and seatbelts are musts. although my DH says the seatbelt in the backseat hurts him and is popping it off. sigh.ask theirdrs what they recommend for sundowning issues. divvi
This is where the trazadone REALLY helped US. I know there are a lot of people who have trouble with it.. but for us it pretty much stopped the sundowning and the asking to go home. Interesting: I was told to give it to him at bedtime but he had trouble swallowing the pill then so I moved it up to dinnertime when he takes other pills. He could swallow it, but it made him very woozy just before going to bed, not great when he has to walk down a hall to the stair glide then up and down another hall etc etc. So we're back to bedtime. The trazadone also made him more alert, by a long shot. Very clear connection, nothing else going on the times I've started using it, adjusted the time of administering it.. and close to immediate effects. It's also on the cheap list.
gmaewok...I have the same problems you are having. Starting around 7 and going on til the big toddler goes to bed. I am 81 and he is 86 and after doing all the work all day I am tired and not too patient. He takes out his hearing aides and starts mumbling questions and I have to yell and he things I am mean. I am sorry to say that a lot of the time my saintly halo slips off and I loose my cool. I am so relieved when he goes to bed and I can have some "me" time. He will tell me the next day how great I am and that other girl was mean to him last night. Makes me feel bad but then I have to laugh that the other Bama is the bad one. She's also the one that is sneaking out of the house at night to meet the young kid that drives the black pickup truck that lives across the street,
awww bama, how cute. i know living with it isnt all that cute at all. DH has severe hearing loss as well. gguess what? i got a dollar store kids cheerleader megaphone to talk to himm thru. works VERY well. he always seems to understand and it lessens my having to repeat.. divvi
My DW was sent to the ER yesterday from the rehab center with a UTI. I went to the ER to meet her, sign papers, represent her and the family etc. She was there about four hours, she spent the entire time begging to go home, blaming me, telling me she was through with me, threatening divorce and even spent time dividing up the furniture, asking for an apartment, support and a car of her own. I went through the same rountine as Marygail went through.
I keep wondering why many of our ADLO's go through this same exact routine. Are they meeting somewhere and plotting against us?
My DH went through some of that for a while. I asked the doctor about it and was told that due to the "holes" in their memory, home may not look like home to them anymore. Another explanation was that they may not really be asking to go "home" but saying that things look unfamiliar and they want to be where they feel safe. I never hit the point of wanting drugs to handle it but did have to do the drive around some and redirect to get past that. Sometimes I could redirect him by putting in a movie and asking him to sit next to me.
It's hard to redirect someone has a one track mind. DH was upset last night because he didn't know where he was going to get a truck. I ask him why he needed a truck and said to put our furniture in to move. I ask him where he wanted to move and he said back to C........ We moved back here 3 years ago from Florida because he was unhappy there. We only lived there 4 years and we came back here where he has lived his whole life. We had been back only 2 months when I realized something was wrong. It's sad to know he wants to come back home and doesn't realize that he is home. Needless to say, if I knew then what I know now we would still be in Florida where all the children, grandchildren and great grandchildren live. I feel so alone with no family in this area. He does have and older sister who is 88 here but that isn't much help. Moving back to Fl. is out of the question now. I don't have the energy to try to sell a house, find a new one, and pack up things again. It would also be a money loosing action so we will stay put.
Without fail everytime I visit my DH he always wants to go home. I know it is the toddler mentality cause he said I need help with the new puppy, mowing the lawn. Easter was especially tough. No sooner did we get in the car to take him back to the NH he started crying and pouting as soon as we left my mothers. Monday when I visited him he said "How is your Mother?" I told him we just saw her yesterday at Easter dinner. "Your brother was nice to me". "Why can't we stop by home I just want to see what it looks like" Under advice from the doctor it will never be a good situation to let him see the house and there may be nasty situations and may not get him back in the car.
My Mom kept saying that during her last month. She had just some senility. I think they are wanting to be comforted and "home" is like "Mom", a great comforter. Doesn't everybody want comfort and love? Sort of like instinct of knowing what is best like animals when they are born. Nobody really knows but just my take on it right now.
This is so DH...every night he wants to go home. He has an ottoman foot stool, packed with his STUFF, precious to him. Everynight he goes to put it in the car ready to take home tomorrow....home to him is where we lived over 30 yrs ago. He is worried we will get thrown out of here..
divvi thanks for bringing this to the top. it is comforting to know others are going or have gone through this. Lets me know it is the alz and not something else. It does hurt when they dont know you. He thinks I left him and someone else is taking care of him. Most of the time he accepts when I tell him this is our home but I only say it once if he doesnt accept it I don't argue. I try to keep him a calm as possible.
Divvi, I'm with you!!! We just did a trip to Florida from Ohio and he spent the entire trip in the back seat with the childlocks on. We also have keyed deadbolts on the front door. Everyone needs a key to get out, but there are no more escapes. These 2 things have made my life so much better if you can imagine that!
linda mc yes of course it makes our lives so much better not having to worry. i went a step further and deadbolted the bedroom door as well so he couldnt get out during the night. i was ok with him roaming the bedroom and tugging at the door handle:) we learn to live with very strange circumstances and make the best of it. (sigh)
My DH does this "I want to go home" thing and it's driving me crazy. It starts around 5:00 PM and lasts until bed time. I tell him we ARE home but two minutes later he will ask again. He's really pitiful when he says "I just want to go home and I can't find anybody to take me." I realize that nothing looks familiar to him any more and it's just so sad. It does sound like sundowning and I'm trying to decide if I should ask his doctor for medication or do any of you have a better way of dealing with this?
Claude did the same thing and then would say "Where's Mom". I would grit my teeth and answer that we were home and I was Mom. I really didn't equate it with sundowning. It was just a part of the disease or a phase he was going thru. Eventually he stopped it and started on something else.
I mentioned it to a friend who was a nurse. She said that "home" was where he was raised and "Mom" was his mother not me. Thinking about it, it is a logical assumption. They say long term memories are the last to go.
The further along he got in the disease, more and more he reminded me of a two year old. I couldn't be out of his sight. I couldn't even go to the bathroom or take a shower without him coming in and asking what I was doing.
I would think yes its sundowning issues. and in my humble opinion yes contact the dr and get meds to help prior to you burning out over the stress of dealing. this hardly ever goes away til later and they move into another phase and it disappears. its a great deal of anguish to hear the constant repititions and knowing they are so anxious. divvi
.......My dear Helen did this almost every evening for about a year, and the only way I could handle it was to take her for a ride. It couldn't be a short ride. It had to be at least an hour long. I would keep telling her during the ride that we were on our way home and as we drove into the driveway she would agree......"Yes we are home" .........It's so sad.........I made a song about it. Maybe you can play it.
Yes, "Take me home, Liz, please, take me home. This isn't our home, Liz. I want to go HOME! I want to go HOME! I want to go HOME! It starts around suppertime and lasts until sometime after we are in bed for the night. It is heartbreaking, and drives me crazy. If I say, "We are home. This is our home.", he just gets all the more upset and says, "No it isn't! This is not my home!" But he is never able to tell me where he thinks home is, or what the house looks like, or anything like that. Sometimes in months past I believe he was talking about his childhood home, but now I just don't know. He doesn't seem to be able to be specific about where he thinks we should be going, but it is heartbreaking to see him so unhappy. Nothing I can do seems to comfort him. I can distract him a little sometimes, but that's about it. It must be such an anxious, lost feeling. Last night when he was shouting in bed, I tried to give him his Ativan, but he was so agitated that he wouldn't take it. He finally settled down on his own.
I read not long ago on one of the FB groups,from the person with dementia, when he thinks of going home, he is thinking of when he dies. So who knows which it is - maybe some of both.
I used to do exactly what George did. He would ask to go home over and over again. I would take him for a ride in the car. Sometimes I would just ride and other times I would take him to a 24 hour store and walk him around. When we returned, he would accept that he was home. He didn't do this every night, but did it maybe twice a week or so. I have heard some of the same explanations given here for this behavior, but I was never really sure where he thought home was.
Cordis did this at night so I would tell him okay but we will have to wait until tomorrow because I can't drive at night. That satisfied him and he didn't remember asking the next day. Agreeing with him always made things easier.
I'm so glad this thread was brought back. I'm going through this right now. Exactly the same thing. It started In the middle of this past winter. He woke me at 3 am one night. He was dressed to go outside and wanted me to take him home and he wanted to go now, he said. He never stopped asking the whole night long. I thought I would lose my mind that night. I was almost hysterical. He just keep repeating it, like a mantra. Even in bed, he kept saying it, practically crying, and I was too.
I've realized since then, by asking him night after night and day after day, what he meant. Where did he want to go? He couldn't answer. He was unable to answer. He kept saying he didn't know. One night I said to him quietly, "do you mean you want to go to your boyhood home, where you lived as a teenager? He said he did, that he had responsibilities there: his mom, his brothers. They needed him. I told him I would take him there if I could, but I couldn't. I explained why. He realized, I think, what it wasI was saying at the time. It doesn't mean that his asking to go home stopped, it went on and on for months, but when I told him the truth, that there was no one he knew in that house and that if I could take him back I would, he seemed to accept it.
I realize as I'm typing this that he hasn't asked me about it as much as he did before. What a revelation this is! But he is going downhill very fast. Earlier today I had to take him with me to my doctor appointment. He was extremely confused during our visit to the Hospital. He even swore that my doctor looked like one of my family members. Afterwards he asked me what was going on? He realized who he felt the doctor looked liked, but at the same time knew it wasn't logical. He asked what was happening.
Tonight when I brought him his pills and water he wondered what would happen to him without me. I know things are moving much faster now. Am I prepared for it? I don't know. It's been going on for so long.
Dazed, Sometimes the home they say they want to go to is not your home, the home you share now and have shared for many years..it is their childhood home where the memories seem to be now. How sad to think they have gone back in years like that to the point they really don't know where the now home is and can only think about the home of yesteryear.
My DW only said a few times that she wanted to go home, and couldn't be clear even then about where she meant, but my interpretation was that she was longing for a return to a dimly remembered "safe" place or life situation, free from the chaos and confusion wracking her mind and the infirmities and pain wracking her body.
Thanks everyone for your comments. I have been trying to tell him this IS home and that's probably the wrong thing since this doesn't look like home to him. I'm going to try the delay approach suggested by someone here - like "It's late so we're going to sleep here and I'll take you home in the morning." I hope this will work because he doesn't ask to go home in the mornings. It is hard not to tell him the truth but when the truth doesn't make sense to them, well, here comes the fiblets.
Dazed, this used to start every late afternoon/evening. It got so bad at times, I'd tell him I would pack our clothes so we could leave early in the morning and I'd do it! I know he was wanting to go to his childhood home and sometimes he'd say he had to go see his Mother, who had died many, many years earlier. But that was my clue as to where 'home' was. This isn't an easy time and I used a lot of fiblets. You just have to.
Fiblets about this subject wouldn't work for me. My husband asked me all day long, into the night and would actually get angry about it. He would ask his kids to take him home if they were here or ask as soon as someone would leave. It was extremely stressful for both of us. There were times when I would see him cry. In all our years of marriage, I only saw him cry a couple of times.
I believe fiblets work most of the time, and it was, and still is, very difficult for me to lie to him, but I do if I need to. But I just didn't see how lying to him about going home was going to help. He wanted to go to his boyhood home. How could I lie and tell him his mom and dad were alive and I would take him to see them the next day? Impossible. I keep telling him this is OUR home, that we have lived here for 50 year s and raised our children here. I gave him a picture of his mom and dad, framed it and put it on his dresser. He asks me how long ago they died. I found the prayer cards for their funerals and gave them to him to look at whenever he asks. I simply don't believe I am being kind by lying to him and saying we will see them again when we won't. They died many, many years ago.
I know we're all different and know our husbands. I believe a little glimmer of how he used to be is still in him. I don't believe he would want me to tell him his parents are alive when they aren't. Now, when he asks when I'm going to take him home, it seems like he can take it when I say this is his home. He only has one brother left and has asked to talk to him. I let him call him whenever he wants. His brother tells him the truth as well. Asking to go home still goes on, but he doesn't seem to get angry and it doesn't go on for whole days or nights. He would never have accepted the idea of waiting, he would have wanted to go right then and there.
We each do what we have to do. This is what I did. Finally, after weeks and weeks of it, it is settling down somewhat.
Bev, as with most things about this disease, we all feel like we are fumbling in the dark to find a resolution that fits our situation and our DH's circumstance. So glad you followed your gut and found a resolution that works for you.
This is a link to an article by someone with dementia trying to explain what he thinks he means when he says he wants to go home. Maybe it will help some or give food for thought.
DH has been starting the "Liz, when the hell are we going home?" at night around bedtime, so I give him his Ativan with his PM meds and get him into bed. He goes to sleep pretty quick without getting agitated. (Dosage was just doubled, so works better.) I can give him doses every six hours now (instead of every eight), so when he wakes up at 3 am and starts yelling, "Nurse!!", or "Help!!", I just give him some more Ativan.
Thanks for the link, Charlotte. That guy seems to think it's about insecurity and needed to be reassured that he is going to be taken care of. Sounds like elizabeth has a working solution. I wish I could give Ativan. My DH fell...3 times, on the two nights I gave it to him. Maybe their body has to adjust to it. I may try it again if this "I want to go home" doesn't get better.
As a newcomer to this site I was not sure which message board to read but when I saw this one, I knew it was for me.
When my husband wants to go home, he is referring to his childhood home. He thinks his parents are alive and that they and his and siblings are there. This usually happens in the evening and when the days are long, we get in the car and go for a ride on a country road. When we get back, he sees our house and instructs me to turn in. It's different in winter because I refuse to drive around on icy roads in the dark, so I rely on Ativan, which I usually crush into a cup of applesause or ice cream. If I notice the signs of his anxiety early enough, a small dose of Ativan (.5 mg) usually works and it does not put him to sleep. The trick is to identify the signs early so you can get out ahead of the problem, either with the car ride or the drug.
Unless you have more time and patience that I do, I think it's a mistake to try to psychologically analyze this behavior. Like so much else, it makes little sense and spending too much time dwelling on it will drive you crazy.
Myrtle, right on! And welcome. My grandfather died from Alz. in 1967, although at that time he was considered "merely senile"! Anyway, he would become very agitated about wanting to go home & he definitely wanted to see his mother. He looked for her everywhere.
When & if it happens here, I hope to just try to go with the flow, diffuse it & rely on meds! We'll see, when the time comes!
Even though I’m a newcomer to this site, I am not a newbie when it comes to dementia. My husband was diagnosed 7 years ago and even before that, it was fairly obvious what was wrong. Before that it was my father, who lived with this disease for many years, but he did not ask about people who were dead.
The constant talk about the people in my husband’s childhood gets tiring. Since his parents were dead long before I met him, sometimes I feel like we are living with a group of imaginary characters.
Myrtle, I have to tell you - my mother's sister developed Alz. several years after my mother had died. I guess Auntie "talked" to my mother all the time. My uncle, who was her caregiver, would take her to Arby's for lunch. He said, with humor, he had lunch with Florence AND Dorothy today! Mom & her sister had an ambiguous relationship, & I sometimes wonder if something about that weighed on auntie's mind somewhere deep in those recesses of confusion & if she felt she was making up for something. Just wanted to share that little story!
Mim, That’s very interesting. It makes sense that your aunt might have been trying to mend fences with your mother, especially since she had your uncle to facilitate the meetings.
But now I’m ignoring my own advice - trying to figure out a logical reason for this behavior will drive you crazy!
You are right, Myrtle, don't spend time trying to analyze the odd behaviors. It happens because brain cells are damaged and dying, nothing can bring them back and trying to 'reason' with someone with dementia, as you've found out, is useless. Divert their attention, as you did with rides, or any other activity, ice cream usually works.
So tonight, after an afternoon and evening of asking to go home, my husband and I sat down to watch the news and 60 Minutes while he enjoyed a small bowl of ice cream with Ativan sprinkles. Peace at last.
The first segment on 60 Minutes was about Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who had PTSD. One of the vets was talking about the therapy he was getting and ended by saying something like, “I said, ‘I want to go home.’”
My husband got all excited, jumped up, and said, “See, he wants to go home, too! He’s like me! That’s what I want!”