My mom has had another couple of bad weeks, once again due to taking the wrong medication. She had been having some heartburn issues, going through a lot of tums and so her doctor prescribed famotidine (Pepcid!) to take twice a day. After taking it for about 5 days she started declining cognitively. When she woke me up at 4am wanting to "go home" and I couldn't go back to sleep, I started going through my mental list of things that cause cognitive decline ( a cold, UTI, infection of some other kind, etc) and came up with nothing. Then the lightbulb went on over my head and I remembered the Pepcid and googled it, and way down on the list of possible side effects was "confusion", so I immediately quit giving it to her. That was last Saturday and she's ever so slowly improving. I hadn't given a second thought to giving her Pepcid. It's not on the list of anticholinergics and as a matter of fact, she takes two of the meds on the list ( Warfarin and Lasix) and doesn't have any problems with them.
I can't stress enough how this disease attacks each person differently, especially how different medications affect each person differently, I read on here all the time about people who take gabapentin and Lyrica and those two meds were the worst for my mom. Probably anybody else with LBD could take Pepcid without a problem, but not mom!
My main point when I started this thread was that she keeps wanting to "go home" and she IS home. She has lived in this house for over 10 years and I have been adamant about keeping her "home", but I realized this morning that when she has declines like this, she doesn't know where she is and doesn't know who I am half the time. A few days ago, in the middle of her morning routine ( checking her blood sugar and BP and weight, giving her her meds and breakfast) she looked up at me and said "Oh, Hi Ellen!"!! and I thought " well, who did you think I was 2 minutes ago?"
For the people who have had to put their LO in a SNF and then feel guilty because they want to go home, don't feel guilty! I don't think home is home the way we think of it ( a structure), I think it's a place where they feel like themselves again, and we can't give that to them, all we can do is love them and give the best care we are able to, no matter where they sleep at night. ( I hope that made sense?)
Hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving!
Ellen

ellen..

thanks for the post .. and wonderful thoughts and tips.. the home thing is sooooo true...it brings up times when hubby is hallucinating and asking when we will go home... and how much this rental costs. we ARE home and in a house he built only a few years ago....but putting the two together at later date..when considering alternative possibilities... might of flown right by.. thanks for the tip on pepcid too!!

cindi

Ellen,

This is the best description I've ever read: "I don't think home is home the way we think of it (a structure), I think it's a place where they feel like themselves again, and we can't give that to them."

That's certainly one possibility. Many who deal with those with dementia say that "home" is the childhood home that they can remember as the long-term memories remain.

Sometimes those who experience Capgras think they are in a place that looks like home but is a copy of it -- not their real home.

I think you are absolutely right in that we cannot generally give them the "home" that they are referring to.

Robin