Funniest/strangest dementia patient stories

Nurses Humor

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I'm sure we all have them, especially those of us who have worked in LTC. Here are some of mine:

  • climbing into other residents' beds and taking a nap...one time we found the resident sleeping in a bed that was already occupied by the resident it belonged to--they were both sleeping in there!!
  • putting pajamas in the toilet, then having an extra-large BM right on top of them
  • taking a cup that had some medication mixed in juice, then turning to the person sitting next to her and saying "here, you can have this"--fortunately I was able to take it back before the other resident could get a hold of it
  • wandering around in the hall and grabbing people's butts
  • blowing nose into a tissue, then using same tissue to "clean" nurse's station counter :barf02:

What other funny/crazy things have you guys seen dementia patients do?

I was taking a patient down to the dining room for lunch one day. She was refusing to go. She would only go if my mom and sister agreed to come along. Since she was diabetic and needed to eat I played along. I told her my mom and sister were downstairs waiting for us. She then sat in her wheel chair and let me take her downstairs without a problem.

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Specializes in DD, Mental Health, Geriatric.

diapers? Do u mean products??? :D

Sorry, my pet peeve when people call them diapers.

We call them "briefs" and the residents call them either "diapers", "briefs" or "pull-ups". They can call them whatever they want but we have to be respectful and not use the term "diapers" because its demeaning to them to treat them like children, even unintentionally.

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Specializes in DD, Mental Health, Geriatric.

Back in 1995-1996 I was working for my mother, (a retired LPN), as an aide in her AFH which catered to late-stage dementia clients. Well, as we know during the weekdays any facility can get pretty busy with family coming and going visiting. Anyway, one day it was this other aide and myself on duty, (it was a two aide house in the beginning), this one little old lady started to glare the evil eye at us and began muttering under her breath about what type of place this really was and that we weren't pulling the wool over HER eyes any longer! The other aide and I looked at each other and then one of us said to the resident; "You seem really upset, "Resident's Name"..." And she goes; "Don't you try any of your funny business with me! I see all those men coming and going around here! I wasn't born yesterday! I know you gals are running a whore house!" And then, to put the cherry on top so to say, she leaned over and stage-whispered that she wanted "at least 15% of the profits!" To say the other aide and myself were speechless was an understatement! I told my Mom about it later and we had to laugh. It had happened on a holiday when every resident had had multiple family members come visit and a lot of them were male, so to our poor confused resident they were the "johns" coming to "visit" this "house of Ill repute".

We also had a non-verbal Alzheimer's resident with acute anosmia who got a kick out of taking up flowers, (real or fake), holding them up to her nose, inhaling deeply and then shrugging and shaking her head while laughing at the "joke" she just played on us. :)

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Specializes in DD, Mental Health, Geriatric.

One of the ladies just called me into their room all upset because she "had been gambling with these women all night and now she doesn't have any money to put in the pot." She had me follow her back to her bedroom and she pointed to her TV, which was airing an old episode of Reba, and said she'd been playing a game with "those women" there all night and now she owes them money cause she kept losing. So, apparently she'd been playing poker with Reba McEntire all evening after supper. She asked me to go have them come down and talk to her but I just said that they had to go home and we'd figure it out in the morning. (She'll forget about it all by then). That appeased her and she said she wanted to "shut the game off" for now and go to bed, so that's what we did: She turned off the TV off and crawled into bed.

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Specializes in DD, Mental Health, Geriatric.
Just yesterday we were at the grocery store and this lady started talking to my daughter (she's 6) and I tried to hurry my daughter along after a minute and said "ok, lets go down the cheese aisle now!" The lady took my daughter's hand and walked with us, talking to her like she was her granddaughter. I went with it, and my daughter, good girl that she is, went along with it too, giving me a backwards "what the heck?" confused/amused grin. We walked up the aisle until we found the woman's husband at the end, looking for her. I pointed him out to her and gave her a hug, told her we would see her later, and told her husband "it's ok." After she went to him and walked away, my daughter asked "who was that, mommy?" I told her that she was a confused old lady that liked to talk to little girls. I told her that we had made her happy for a couple minutes by talking to her and walking with her. I'm sure someday my six year old will understand.

That's beautiful! :)

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Specializes in DD, Mental Health, Geriatric.

This isn't really a dementia thing but I just thought it was cute: One of our LOLs has to have Oxybutin gel rubbed on her stomach before bed at night to help with urgency and she calls it her "nightly belly jelly". :)

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I had a pt tell me that cats don't speak English, so you have to speak "cat" to get them to listen. She then proceeded to demonstrate how to speak cat. She also said she'd give her cat a bath in the shower, but would tell the cat it's raining so the cat wouldn't get too mad. She'd get in the shower with the cat and they'd both get clean. Also, when her goldfish died, she wouldn't flush it down the toilet because the goldfish was probably playing dead and it would drown if you flushed it. Yes, the fish would drown in the toilet. Anyway, when her goldfish died, she'd put it down the garbage disposal to make sure it's dead.

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OK, not an Alzheimer's patient... well it is one of his diagnoses but I really don't notice it in him at all. He's HOH even WITH his hearing aides & he had them out. I asked him if he needed help opening his banana. He acted like he hadn't heard me so I picked it up and pointed to the top and repeated myself even louder. He replied "You're single ain't you?" I looked at him confused & said "Do you want me to open this for you?" He replied "I can tell because of the way you picked that thing up, if you was married you would have grabbed it like this" , and grabbed it with his whole hand. I had picked it up with two fingers and a thumb. I began to blush, he said "Gotchya. I can do it myself" I said "good night" and left the room (it was about 9pm, I had been in his room giving HS meds). Upon leaving the room one of the CNAs saw me and asked if I was ok, I started to tell the story and she laughed and said "Yeah he's pulled that one on me a few times" She is most definitely NOT single, she's married with teenage kids! LOL. I don't know whether or not he knows it.

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Once.. I gave a resident her healthshake. She lookd at the box and it said "shake well". She looked at it curiously and said to me,"well it must not be working. Its not shaking at all."

Had another resident who claimed their was a young white boy in his room from his school.so I went along with it and continued cleaning him. When I went to clean his rear he jumped and shouted at me,"He's there,he's there!" I said ,"Where?!!" He's says, "In my BUTT!!!"

One resident used to curse Obama every night. Saying he did nothing for her and her family. She used to yell through the nusing home about how much she hated him. I went into her room to tel her to quiet down a bit. She looks at me,threw her leg into the air, opened her crotch explicitly with both hands and said, " Go on *****, go the **** on *****," in her southern accent. I took that as she wanted me to leave and kindly exited the room.lol

I'm literally loling. This is too funny. Especially the last part.

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I just love those alzheimers patients.

Yeah, so do I since my Mom has Alzheimers. These are your patients but it's a lot different if your loved one suffers from the disease. My laughter when she does these strange things is because if I didn't I would be spending my time crying.

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I used to work on the Alzheimer's unit at a LTC facility and one lady everyday never wanted to be toileted she would always tell me she's not a baby and can do it herself ( which she was unable, she could walk and go to the bathroom but never changed her dirty brief) so usually the always had "sharts" in her brief lol So I told her: Me: we need to change your undies there dirty LOL: no there not I'm not a baby go away Me: no look they have poop on them. You see it LOL: well I do now these aren't my underwear and you put that there Needless to say she was hilarious. We did this every single day... Another resident once told me LOl: get me my purse over there. That's my purse ( points to a dining room chair) Me: that's a chair ma'am That can't be your purse LOL: well I have a purse that looks just like that! She was adorable. We taught her to do the sprinkler

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I was still on work experience in aged care and we had a resident who would not allow a man to shower her (I'm a woman with short hair ) so I went in there and she said you can't shower me, you're a man, I said no I'mNot I'm a woman, she said no you're a man, I said look I gave boobs I'm a woman,she said well you gave a mans face, so I said I'm a woman, I have kids! She said, well, you could be their father!!! Lol

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