My 90 year old Aunt with advanced dementia is in assisted living and she has a cell phone and is constantly calling her friends at 3:00am and now is basically calling her lawyer and doctor multiple times though out the day insisting on speaking with them. Her doctor recently wrote her a letter (at her request because didn't believe what I told her) The doctor is stating she needs 24 hour care and recommends that she stay where she is at. She has been here about 1 month. We tried having her go home before and it lasted only a month before she was threating her caregivers, throwing things at them and locking them in rooms. What can I do?
Time to take away the cellphone, as it is too easy for her to automatically dial someone. Make some excuse to take away the phone, like the phone has been recalled and you don't know when a new phone will be available.
If the room allows landlines, put one in, chances are your Aunt probably won't use it very much as that would require her to dial the whole phone number. Where my Dad had lived, he had to dial 9 just to get an outside line. Note that elders like the safety knowing there is a phone in their room.
My mother did this also and she thought all of her contacts were calls and kept calling everyone. I took the phone away and said it needed to be fixed. This happened right before she went into an assisted living facility and we got a telephone that has only dial in services. She can not dial out. This worked for awhile and then this type of phone confused her... she kept unplugging it and breaking the cord/attachment so I took it away. The facility has always had a policy that you can call them 24/7 and they will bring a mobile phone to the residents and/or the residents can ask to call you and the staff will dial the mobile phone for them. This has solved the issue. As for calling her friends, I bring my cell phone when I visit and call a friend or relative from time to time on it so my mother can talk to them. As a family we also assigned days to call the facility and request talking to mom. This gives her more contact with her children who do not live nearby and also lets others in the family have a "role" in her care, etc.
The first thing we tried was having her phone de-activated. In less than a day she became angry and insisted the staff call me and tell me to fix her phone or bring her a new one. In the meantime we had upgraded our plan and her phone was not compatible, so we gave in and got her a different phone. The calls persisted, with her getting angry if I didn't answer. My favorite was when she left a message demanding that I bring her phone back when she was using her phone to leave the message! So, the phone was removed and we told her that it needed to be fixed. For the next several weeks, she would ask the staff about her phone several times each day. When they reminded her that it was being fixed, she would accept that for a few minutes. Then she would ask again. I was advised to "stay the course" and not return the phone. We kept telling her the same thing, and after a couple of months, she stopped asking. Three months later, I let her speak to her sister using my phone, and she asked where her phone was. I told her I didn't know what had happened to it, and she accepted that answer. She still asks the staff to call me. Sometimes they actually do call and let her talk to me and other times they pretend to call me and leave a message.
I agree that you need to remove her phone, but don't expect it to be easy. I like the idea of an "incoming only" phone, but I don't think it would have worked for my mom. She would have wanted to make outgoing calls and been angry when it wouldn't work. I would ask the staff if she can use a facility phone to make and receive calls when necessary so that there is not always a phone in her room because seeing a phone will remind her to use it.
But alas it is of course understandable as staff would be doing nothing else but making phone calls
Of course when the facility calls me now I always take a deep breath expecting bad news but they generally will start the conversation with this is not an emergency
While she was still at home mom would call me constantly at work and sit by the phone for hours re-writing the same message to herself over and over and then stuff the notes into her pockets and bra
Dementia takes a toll on everyone it touches