To my surprise he told me that he figured he would need to be in the nursing home by October. The memory is going so fast now, but his logic is pretty good in many things. He keeps wondering when we are going home. So I explain to him that we are already home and that he sleeps here in his own bed. I thought that I would have felt relief to hear him say this, but instead I feel pretty sad. Of course thinking he wants to go and going are 2 different things. D any of you identify with this situation?
That is an interesting mix of insight or lack thereof--that he sees residential care in his future, while losing his grip on the present. I would predict that it will not be particularly helpful to you, should the time for placement arrive, that he saw it coming in a moment of insight. But maybe...they're all so different in awareness and in their ability to grasp the necessity at some level.
I was away for the week on family vacation. My brother-in-law visited Jeff at the ALF almost every day. Two days before I returned, BIL said to Jeff that I'd be back Sunday. Jeff replied something like "she needs to get away." It's interesting. I don't know what he realizes from moment to moment, but there is a level at which he understands that I've cared for him myself all these years.
You may have to shift your responses, when he says he wants to "go home," from re-orienting him to instead just talking about home, or distracting him with something else.
That is so true, paulc. Most nights, DH doesn't recognize our house and thinks we are somewhere else. He often asks me if he ever told me he used to live here. It's so confusing, I guess to them and to us. Sometimes I tell him no, I didn't know that and he proceeds to tell me a long story which makes no sense. But I try never to correct him. I hate this disease!