I have been a caregiver for over 10 years. I'm also a nurse. I work as a caregiver as my supplemental income because I love taking care of people outside the nursing scope. I have a patient that has dementia. He is very nice but this weekend he became very combative, and attacked me. Only thing I did was keep him safe until family could get there. I have dealt with dementia and Alzheimer patients before. But nothing to this magnitude. He seriously could have hurt me. Then he states that I hit him and a bunch of other things of which are untrue and the family didn't believe but to be accused is still scary as I don't want anything to jeopardize my nursing license .The family states that this has never happened and asking if I would please stay on as his caregiver. The whole situation has made me uneasy because I know it can happen again and it is a little unsettling. I'm just looking to see if anyone else has experience something like this and how they handled it.
To learn more about Alzheimer's/Dementia, and the different aspects [such as you had witnessed] go to the bottom of this page to the blue area... click on ALZHEIMER'S CARE, then scroll down through the various articles. There are articles about what you went through. While reading the articles you will see advertisements at the end of a couple of paragraph, scroll over them to read the rest of the article.