If anyone may recall while my father-in-law was here with us I talked about his sometimes violent behavior, it wasn’t pretty. He changed from a man who’d never put his hands on a woman to threatening his daughter (my wife) to pinning her up against the front door by her upper chest/throat area.
A couple years before she passed, my mother-in-law would sometimes complain he would have sudden outbursts of anger or rage which unfortunately we did not look into deeply and I don’t believe my wife disclosed to doctors at the time at checkup time. Looking back we see now that was a huge mistake.
While he was here living with us, we enrolled him at an adult daycare facility and he displayed anger issue there as well, from making a scene by shouting, kicking the glass doors saying let me out to actually hitting another patient at one time, something they described as an audio hallucination.
We tried many medications to help keep him calm but there was a heart issue where doctors were concerned about too much sedatives and in private care facilities the use of chemical restraints is not allowed. Our/his doctor did prescribe a heavy sedative called Haldol but continued use turned him into a non functioning person.
When things got too far out of our control and we needed professional help from a full time care provider, they informed us yes they could use it but unfortunately they rarely did. His transition into the care facility was often very difficult and my wife and I were called into discuss his aggressive and sometimes physical behavior. We would ask why aren’t you using the Haldol and their reply was often a this or that reason.
One thing that Barbara and I would discuss often would be what’s going through his head? How scared must he be not knowing who we are or where he is and why he’s living here with us no matter how comfortable a setting we made the house.
Below is an article discussing such problems and I hope some of you will read it snd put this info in your back pocket for future reference should it ever involve anyone you may know who may have to deal with this horrible situation and disease.
FYI; it’s not a short article.
“ ‘Scared to death’: Nurses and residents confront rampant violence in dementia care facilities”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/scared-death-nurses-residents-confront-100005446.html
