My mother-in-law is driving the staff at her Assisted Living place crazy with her constant unrelenting phone calls. She has dementia. She has been in assisted living for the past 6 years.

Lately her short-term memory is getting very bad. She mixes up dates and times constantly and can't seem to fathom the passage of time properly.

She has a phone in her room (her own private phone). The problem is, she is CONSTANTLY calling the front desk of the Assisted Living place where she lives, trying to make sense of the daily schedule (various trips they take or things that happen on certain days). She just can't keep it straight. She writes it down and then gets confused and calls again and again. She is driving the people who work there crazy with her constant calling. And I mean constant. I'm not exaggerating when I say that she calls the front desk every 2 minutes. I'm serious. Every 2 minutes from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. when she goes to bed. Every single day. I've been there and have seen it happen.

The people who work there have mentioned it to us, but in a very non-threatening way. We feel terrible about this and need to do something about it!

My mother-in-law is even calling the staff members at home at 4 a.m. There is one woman who works there and is available on-call. Her cell phone number is on her business card, and my mother-in-law has her card. She calls her at 4 a.m. almost every morning! The woman cannot shut off her cell phone because she is on-call. IMO, THAT IS TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE!!!

If we take her phone totally away, it will upset her greatly. It will also make it harder (but not impossible) for *us* to reach her (we could have someone who works there relay a message to her, but as you know sometimes that doesn't work very well).

They mentioned to us that some of the residents there have a kids phone called Migo. It only has 3 buttons that you pre-program -- no dial pad. We could program the phone just to have our number, but not the number of the front desk at her place. She would have to go downstairs to the lobby to talk to them if she has a question.

The downside would be that she would call *us* every 2 minutes. If that became the case, we might have to take away the Migo phone and leave her without a phone. Or program the phone so that she can get incoming calls but not make any outgoing calls at all.

I'm very torn about what to do. I don't want to be cruel to her, but her constant calling has to stop. I asked the phone company if they can block the front desk's number from her phone but unfortunately because it is in the same "zone" they can't. And the front desk said that they cannot block HER number from THEIR phone because it is against the company's rules.

Does anyone have any ideas for me regarding how to handle this situation? Has anyone had success in a situation like this with the Migo phone or a similar phone?

I am thinking yoga, and or meditation would help. If she can accept living in the now, then she will realize what ever happens can be fun, but I understand that the habits of planning may be something she can't stop.

I guess you have thought of taking the phone away. Just give her a pager where she can only use it in an emergency situation. But she may abuse it. Still a beep is better than the same old story.

I am thinking yoga, and or meditation would help. If she can accept living in the now, then she will realize what ever happens can be fun, but I understand that the habits of planning may be something she can't stop.

I guess you have thought of taking the phone away. Just give her a pager where she can only use it in an emergency situation. But she may abuse it. Still a beep is better than the same old story.

She has no concept of "living in the now" and never will. That is dementia and mental illness. She has no concept of time or place anymore.

A pager would probably be too complicated for her to use, but thanks for the idea!

When you are dealing with a victim of Alzheimers, you have to use a lot of imagination and little white lies. My suggestion would be the kind of telephone connection my Mom had at her nursing home - she could receive calls, but not make any. If she picks up the phone and dials, nothing happens. When she complains, "sorry --- it is broken; they are working on it". Soon she will forget all about it. In her last few months Mom never picked up the phone. If it rang she looked at it curiously as if to say, "I wonder what that thing is, making that noise", but had no recollection that it was an instrument of communication.

I am surprised that the AL staff has not already made sure she gets a disabled phone , one that does not work, or one only for incoming calls. It is not necessary for her to call anybody. If there is an emergency she surely has a push button to get help. She will also forget how to use that - but by then assisted living is too little help, she will need to be in a NH with 24/7 supervision. Pretty soon the whole phoning mania will be forgotten.

Because of setting fires and burning pots, many people here had to disable their AD loved one's stove. Because of driving irresponsibly they had to disable their cars. Always a cheerful, upbeat answer to all complaints: "we are working on it; it will be fixed soon.'' No long drawn out explanations. Obviously she cannot use a pager for emergencies --- since every 2 minutes she thinks she DOES have an emergency. This disease takes a lot of coping skills. You have always looked up to and respected her, now you have to put her off like a little child. But you MUST do it, for your own sanity and that of the staff.

Good luck!

Martha

Have you tried getting her one of the new atomic clocks? They are relatively large, hang on the wall, and not only have the time but the day and date on them. We hung it where Mom and Dad can both see it from their chairs and it has done well helping them keep up with the time, day, and date. There was not a learning curve with this clock. The information is displayed right in front of their faces.

They also have a wall calendar, where they can see it, with all the activities they want to attend.

We have the opposite problem with the phone. Mom can not figure out how to call the desk and can never remember to dial "9" for an outside line to make other phone calls. We finally just put a 9 in front of all the family numbers for her so she will call one of us when she calls anybody.... which is rare.

Your best bet is at least temporarily to have an incoming call only phone. I will probably frustrate her for a while but eventually be forgotten as Martha said.

Question, do they come get her for activities or is it up to her to get there? You might ask that she be called in time to make it to activities.

Hope something works and good luck.

Love, deb

Just an idea for the 4am calls to the on-call person - can you get a hold of the card and add/change a couple of numbers so that when she calls it doesn't go through?

I did this with my SIL for people's work numbers when she went through the calling every two minutes stage - it didn't frustrate her too much, she just moved on to other numbers that she had.

Thanks to everyone who posted so far.

First of all, you have to understand that no amount of calendars or clocks is going to help this woman. She is totally befuddled by planning and scheduling things. She just can't fathom it anymore and she just can't keep anything straight, no matter how many times she writes it down on anything, whether it be a calendar or a piece of paper. Her short term memory is badly damaged and she doesn't remember the answer to a question you gave her 20 seconds ago -- she will ask the same question over and over and over again. She writes down the answer and then can't seem to understand what she has just written, so she asks the question again and again and again.

Secondly, I would LOVE to get her a phone that only receives incoming calls, but what the heck type of phone is that and where can I get one? She has a regular normal phone line in her room, with her own regular private phone number. I already called the phone company and asked if it is possible to block her line from making calls and they told me that they cannot do that. They can only block her from calling numbers outside of her "zone."

The place she lives is assisted living, not alzheimer's care. There are people there that do not have dementia and are just old and slow. So they have "all the comforts of home" in their little rooms (minus the cooking facilities -- all meals are served in the dining room). I think that given my MIL's decline, she will be going into an alzheimer's care place within the next year or two. She still remembers/recognizes people and objects.

Regarding the person whom my MIL is calling at 4 a.m. -- a stack of her business cards is prominently displayed at the front desk. If my MIL lost a card, she would take another and another. So there is really no way to "change the number on the card" unfortunately.

MayMay -
Is there a reason why the phone cannot simply be disconnected but left in place? If her memory is as bad as you describe she will not know if you called an hour ago or a day ago. She can be told "they" are working on fixing it. At my husband's ALF which caters solely to people with dementia none of the rooms have phones. When someone receives a call a phone is brought to them. If the situation continues as you describe the ALF will be asking her to leave for the sanity of their staff.
Deb's suggestion of the large atomic clock is a valid one. You have nothing to loose by hanging one up. Make sure it has large numerals and be seen at night.
The situation you, and the rest of us, are in is tough. You have to learn to throw out the old rules to survive.
Raffeer

I hear your frustration, I think we all do.

Looking behind the reason for the phone obsession (and based on my experience alone - everyone is different), what I guess is happening is that she has reached the point where she needs constant guidance/reassurance/reminding about what is happening in her day?

Perhaps it is is time for a move to a more interactive/dementia-appropriate environment? It sounds to me as though more intensive attention to her needs is what she needs at this stage.

love, Georgie

Well, someone in a previous thread mentioned getting a phone where no calls can be made. At the time I didn't understand what that meant. But then I did some research on the web and found an Alzheimer's online store that has a phone with no dial-out. It looks like a "hotline" -- no number pad, but it takes incoming calls. With more research I found someone on eBay selling it used for much less than the Alzheimer's store, so I bought it.

My husband and I need to figure out a way to tell his mother that this will be her new phone. We know that she mis-dials a lot, so we may have to make up a story that the phone company was going to turn off her phone because they were getting too many complaints about her disturbing people by constantly mis-dialing, and this was the only solution. Or something. We'll come up with something. If anyone here has any ideas, let me know. But with this type of phone, we could still reach her in her room. It's a better solution than unplugging it or taking it away totally.

She isn't so far gone that she can't understand the logic behind some arguments, so we have to be careful how we present this to her.

Raffeer, when you say that the staff may ask her to leave -- well we've been scared of that for some time now. They have been EXTREMELY patient with her. In fact, this has been going on for months and just recently they told us about it. Then I witnessed it myself. I knew that she called them a lot, but I had no idea that it was HUNDREDS of times per day (and that is no exaggeration).

Georgie04, you are correct that she probably does need more re-assurance about her schedule. We are going to talk to the staff at her place and see if there's anything they can do to give her more guidance. They give every resident a printed schedule of what's happening that month AND that week, and it's posted in the lobby on a huge calendar. MIL has a digital clock in her room and can still tell time fine. She just can't fathom a calendar or a schedule anymore. She obsesses over it and it upsets her greatly. It's hard to watch her suffer so much over something so relatively trivial, because the staff always comes to get her when she has signed up for an event or outting.

When we plan to see her, we have to tell her the day before. If we tell her earlier in the week, she gets totally confused, thinking for example that our coming on Saturday afternoon will interfere with an event on Tuesday morning. She just doesn't seem to understand the correct passage of time anymore.

My husband and I know that the day is coming where she will need to be moved into a facility that is more dementia/alzheimer's oriented. It's hard, because aside from the scheduling and phone call thing, she isn't that bad. We aren't in denial about her condition or anything -- it has been a slow gradual decline for the past 6 years -- we just don't want to uproot her from her "home" and her "friends" until it is absolutely necessary. I also want to mention that she isn't terribly elderly -- she just turned 80. When she entered assisted living, she was the youngest person living in the place.

So sad...she used to be a high school teacher and commuted to and from work every day, raised a family, was active in her community....well, I guess I don't have to tell you guys, because I assume you're in the same boat with your loved ones. Now she treats her son as if he was her father. The role reversal is mind-blowing and at first was very hard for my husband to take, but now he has accepted it.

If this phone solution doesn't work out, or if the place she's in can't do enough to quell her agitation about her schedule, then we may have to move her sooner than we had expected. Fortunately there's a good place very close to our house.

HI MayMay, I've been reading the thread with interest. You've had some really good ideas.

My only suggestion is: Don't make the 'story' complicated. Keep it simple and believable. "Mum, here is a new phone cause your old one is broken" if she asks how it is broken just tell her the telephone company noted a fault on the line (although this is becoming complicated).

We have 'everyday phones' here in Australia that can, with a simple phone call to the carrier, be programmed from THEIR end to only accept Emergency outgoing calls (911 in USA, 000 in Australia) and any incoming calls. Check with the telephone carrier of the options.

Keep it simple. Don't give choices (or at least limit the choices) and she will become compliant sooner rather than later. I would make some serious investigations at the 'other place' you mentioned, because her dementia is putting her in a very agitated place and it's only a matter of time before she not only hassles the front desk, but she will expand and start on neighbours. Guaranteed sadly.

Cheers

I had one other thought as I read through this thread. Mom had her cleaning and laundry obcession. It was very much like the phone obcession in that it was constant and nerve wracking. Waking up early to clean clean clean. Window's washed repeatedly. Trash thrown out until she was throwing out necessary items. It was frustrating. Washing sheets every day and clothes repeatedly. Then Mom got sick with flu, pheumonia, drug reactions, a fall, and much more. She was sick for months. The day I called and she was doing laundry was a blessing!!!! It's all relative.....

Mom has a better sense of time than Dad does but they both get extremely confused.... and the two of them together can create chaos. I agree to keep the explination very simple. If necessary unplug her phone for a few days so she knows it is not working then just replace it. She will probably not remember the explination but hopefully will adjust to the new phone.

We each know your frustration. Mom was an accountant and now can not subtract two simple numbers. Dad was an agricultural specialist that traveled world wide doing consultant work and now can't remember that he had lunch when he finally finds his way back to the room. It is heart wrenching what this disease robs from it's victims and it cares not who they were.

I am off to visit with my parents and extended family for my nieces baby shower (She is due on Mom and Dad's birthday). With Dad's failing health, Mom and Dad's confusion, sister drama because of dealing with the disease, and all that has transpired it should be an interesting day.

I hope you find a solution to the phone problem and will keep you and your Mom in my thoughts and prayers May.

love, deb