My mom has been obsessing over her nails. She files them every day, several times, and buffs them for 20 minutes at a time. It is driving me crazy!!! When it's not her nails, she seems to find something else to obsess over. Her hair is thinning, and she's obsessing over that as well. We tried Rogaine and several different shampoos. The doctor said that it's not due to medication, checked her thyroid again, and thinks it just aging.
I will try to give feed back from time to time.
Good luck with her behavior. You can check with her doctor for meds that might help. We had to stop all dementia drugs and start an anti-anxiety med.
problem.
By the way, my mom has been OCD her whole life, and she was brilliant. So I don't think it's about dementia.
Doing the same thing over and over again is a way to be calm and a way to control your failing brain. My husband washes the catfood dishes under running water for 5 minutes each. I have decided that it calms him, so I try not to fret about wasting water.
If the behavior is not harmful, try to ignore it. If it's "just" driving you crazy, try to distract her into some different activity.
If she wants to do it NOW, that's because she knows she will forget what it is if she has to wait. If she does it over and over again, it may be that she has forgotten that she just did it.
I've never heard of a link between actual OCD and dementia risk, but it makes sense. Any type of mental illness must burn out brain circuits much faster than normal.
If it does and she isn't damaging her nails, bleeding, etc.; i'd let it go and tell her how beautiful they look. If she starts, maybe you want to re-direct her to another activity or doing something together that you both enjoy like a craft, looking through pictures, folding laundry or something.
If you are really concerned about the behavior, you could call the dr and ask if there is something he can give her that is low dose anti-anxiety. That might help.
My mom is obsessive because she knows she is "losing her mind" so she becomes obsessive with bills, wallet, purse, -- checking and rechecking to make sure everything is in order. This can repeat several times a day.
I offer reassurance and let her handle/pickup and put back the bills, letters, etc. as she "needs to do this" to make sure it is as she left it.
However, my mother did repeat herself for many years before she passed, It increased little by little and by the time she was in assisted living then nursing she was making all sorts of claims and repeatedly told me the same thing (about 20 times every 5 minutes) and didn't remember that she had told me. When she started getting irritated with me for saying that she already told me that , i would just nod my head or say ok, It's irritating but a minor thing to deal with considering what they are mentally going through. My mom must have told me a thousand or two times that she lost a tooth, someone punched her in the face, the woman in the next room had a baby and killed it, there were bugs biting her in her bed every night, the staff was having sex in a bathtub every night. AND that she had been raped (which when i requested that only a female help her undress at bedtime they had to report her claim to the state even though I told them that it was just a fantasy) OMG! Had to fill out a formal questionnaire about that claim for the state.........These claims continued increasingly until she passed. They got more elaborate and after awhile she talked about nothing else, repeatedly (AND I MEAN REPEATEDLY) I feel that it may have something to do with the brain gradually diminishing from the decease and the repeating is not recognized as such ....The repetition is somehow comforting to them. I'm sure that the physical repetition is somewhat the same. Smile, Grin and Bare it -----And just be glad that this is a harmless activity. ps The psych did put my mom on anti psychotics =but they did not seem to help-------Good luck I'll keep you in my prayers
My experience with antidepressants is that Prozac upset my stomach but Zoloft was fine. My friend Jane found that Zoloft gave her diarrhea, but Prozac was fine.
I have used Ativan, and it is very gentle to me, but I know that I would be super careful if giving it to someone with liver or kidney problems, because they can't get it out of their system that easily. I also know that, even if the dose is small, I got some weird effects when I stopped cold turkey. I just took a half dose every other day for a few days, and then I stopped with no problem.
That describes it so well, BlueRidge.