Parent with Alzheimer's: how do you handle all the phone calls?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just let them go to voicemail if you can’t pick up. Don’t make the caregivers restrict his calling to you. That could increase his anxiety and make him even more resentful of the caregivers. I say this as someone who was caring for my parent with dementia all the time until we finally got twenty four hour care in place. I still call and visit a lot. Pick up the calls a couple times a day and call yourself at least a few times a week.

Better to say the phone is broken an d unplug or something especially if you tend to keep your phone on for emergencies otherwise the frequent interruptions to your sleep and life will make anger and resentment bubble over. I say this as someone who lived it.

[Anonymous]

At this point it's time to start obfuscating... unplug the phone cord. "It's broken, we'll call to fix it soon" kind of thing. It feels very very weird and bad to lie to your parent all the time but that's what's called for now. It's sad and hard, but it's necessary to keep him safe and you sane.

The caregivers have to be in on it and see what works. Redirection is very helpful as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My grandmother had dementia and man there was while where she was dialing everyone in her phone book. We eventually had to lose the book.

Watch that, we had to turn off 411 after MIL racked up hundreds of dollars in directory assistance charges. I don't have a lot of recommendations but I will say this period didn't last forever. We tried the phone is broken one but she just convinced others to let her use their phone. The best thing that seemed to work was to leave the landline for her to call. She was comforted by hearing DH's voice on the outgoing message and would leave us several messages a day. Her caregivers had our cell numbers and we knew they would call us if there was something really wrong.