Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Dementia and social media

A topic I’ve never seen a discussion about. Don’t currently have a real problem, but can see the potential for it.

I’ve got a M-I-L who has been in the early stages of dementia for several years. She lives on her phone, has a FB account, but rarely posts. To meet her, she would seem pretty normal to people who don’t know her.

Last several years, her life seems to revolve around a small group of weirdos- not creepers, just a few older women with problems like hoarders, a drug addict, half-nuts type people that she met when she started hanging out at a local McDonalds and a thrift store where she and they meet and hang out. Something my wife says is very unlike her in the past.

She has been exhibiting that Joe Biden-like anger and frequently makes false accusations to her husband, my F-I-L, for at least a year or more- but not in front of us. (My wife says that she was never like that before either.)

At any rate, I don’t really have a question, and am not really looking for advice, but I figure with an aging populace with cell phones and on social media, there either is, or is about to be, an epidemic of potential for serious problems. Like, “Help! Someone dial 9-1-1, I’m being held hostage by my family!” or something like that. Just curious if anyone has stories, speculation, tall-tales etc.

Old broads posting their tata’s. The horror!

When my mother went thru dementia one of the things we had to get a handle on quick was money. She just didn't understand how it worked anymore and if she had cash would give it away to almost anyone. She also couldn't grasp income vs spending and would have spent herself into serious trouble if left to her own.

She was also pretty good at hiding her condition from her doctors and it took us a couple of go arounds to get her doctor to realize how bad she was getting towards the end. There can be underlying medical problems causing dementia that can be treated, but her docs need to do the testing and referrals to find out.

Somewhere in your state and county will be some assistance organizations for Alzheimer's, dementia, and aging in general. It'd be a good idea to find out who they are sooner rather than later.

You obviously haven't been following the posters here on the Fire very well over the years.

It's here, it's real, it's now.

I dealt with those problems of increasing paranoia with my wife when she was suffering from Alzheimer's dementia. Here is a woman, Dr. Natalie Edmonds, who has been working with and helping people whose close loved ones have various stages of dementia. Her many very helpful, short videos address the multiple aspects and problems encountered by the people who have to take care of loved ones with dementia. The following is just one of many of her videos. They are free to watch. Her information and advice certainly helped me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGjuX8WHJLk


Best of luck. It is a very difficult road ahead.

L.W.

The best thing i did when my mom started showing signs was READ about it and how to handle it. My two cents is just remember her how she was not who she is now, my mom would put clothes on inside out or backwards shoes on wrong feet. When i first started seeing it id get mad and tell her to fix her clothes but after reading i learned more of how to talk to her as it wasn’t her fault. It was thought to see a self made woman( her mom died when she was 3 and her dad went to St. Louis for work in the depression so she was living with relatives . Put herself thru pharmacy college smart tough lady. In the end my mom knew me but couldn’t remember my name then covid hit and after not getting to see her for 3 months she didn’t even recognize me.

Yes, akasparky. I’m aware it’s real and now. And yes, I’ve seen stuff on here about it. I’m more so looking at this from the angle of potential damage via their “misuse” of social media to say for instance, spread wild tales of family abuse to old friends and distant relatives with whom maybe they’ve had no contact in years and don’t know what’s really going on, as opposed to the pre-social media days when, other than close friends and family who knew, they just kind of quietly disappeared until you were shocked to read their obit.

We moved into a house with a separate “in-law” suite last year. My wife has overheard her mom talking on the phone outside our bedroom window to one of her many new “friends” about my wife’s dad. Some totally untrue things that are very real in her mind.

This is the kind of thing that has got me thinking about possible ramifications for families of dementia patients with a cell phone and Facebook, etc. The potential damage could be as much as a SWAT team kicking in somebody’s door because a dementia patient falsely posted something or called and told a friend something false. I know a little about taking driving privileges away, but haven’t seen anything about taking away access to social media and cell phones.

Check out SACharlie's threads........

Lol, I can only imagine. I’ve had him on ignore for years!

I have an adopted sister who is fighting this battle with her bio dad. He has lost it. Divorced his wife, says everyone is out to kill him. Calls the police to report stalkers all the time until they took the sim card from his phone. My own Dad became like a lamb. Sweet and gentle but would answer the phone and give away bank account numbers and pin numbers until the phone got turned off and account numbers changed. Very sad and painful to watch. My friend's dad said the hell about getting old is remembering how good you use to be. Same with watching old people melt away. Good luck

had the same problem with my mother, she just was giving her money away. my oldest son got her for 45 grand, icouldnt do anything about that as he was taking her to the bank and having her write checks for cash, Catholic Church got her for 250 grand for stain glass windows, the priest and I had a really good talk about that, the end game was I told him this won't happen again or he will have to deal with me, hauled her butt to court and got full POA of her, money, my mom would go 0 to 60 in anger fits all the time till she got so bad till she was just a lost soul good thing mom didn't know how to use a cell phone

Thanks guys for the input.

Lost Mom and Dad in the past year to that awful disease. Wouldn't wish it on anyone.

My father in law had it, painful to see.

I got a lot more imagination than you.

That sort of thing has been going on for centuries. Priests, preachers, other nefarious mountebanks and charlatans have been plowing that scam incessantly, promising the elderly the more $$$$$ they give, the more Jesus will love them and deliver them out of Hell.

Wonder how much of that $250,000 went into the priest's private bank account?

L.W.

Dealing with this issue with my Mom and social media now...its no fugging fun.

Bad memories for me reading all these very familiar experiences. Social media, money, debit cards, anger, bitterness, hoarding.

No filters.

Dementia and mental illness is quite common...

The web can fuel lots of weird crap.

I don't know much, but the more pure a man is at his core... I reckon the safer he will be mentally ill, on morphine... or drunk as a skunk.

Don't keep chit inside...