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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

Dementia patients will forget that many of their loved ones are dead, and will ask to visit them, or why they don't come to visit. Reminding them that they're dead is a terrible thing, as I found out the hard way. Just say they're out of town for the time being. They've lost their ability to cope with reality, it's best to just go with the flow instead of upsetting them.

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I don't think that lying to people is a good strategy.

I mean, if I'd forgotten that my whatever was dead, I'd like to be reminded. Not humored. Because that's so dehumanizing.

And if I'm so far gone that I can't handle it, I'll probably forget about it all, fairly quickly.

Or if you can't deal with the upset, just distract them.

I think you underestimate the emotional toll of this disease on caretakers and sufferers alike. There's no point in aggravating someone with dementia unless you're goal is to hasten their demise by making them engage in self harm.

Maybe that's why my wife lets me play on computers 24/7 ;)

You say you'd forget, but that's the point. You forget you've asked, you forget the person is dead, you ask about them, you're told they're dead, you're shocked and you start grieving for them, and now you're in a loop of continuously asking about the person, and being told they're dead, and grief.

Keeping someone trapped in this grief-loop is cruel. It's far better to just lie.

I can imagine that it's like that for many. But so far, for me, it's mostly forgetting that they ever existed. So I can't imagine even asking. But maybe that will change.

I had a grandfather dementia. Whenever we had to leave from visiting him, he would remark that we "just got here!". His short term memory was less than 5 minutes, so he would start the "but you just got here" bit by the time we had finished saying goodbye and were headed toward the car. This loop would happen several times with sincere emotion in his face, until we would just say something like, "we'll be right back" and just leave.

Was he perhaps in a nursing home? If so, maybe he was just terrified of being left alone.

Many years ago, I turned a girlfriend on to LSD. She loved it, and wanted more the next day. I told her that she ought to wait a few days, for the tolerance to fade. But she was adamant.

So we did maybe 2-3 doses, and she was still unsatisfied with the peak. And -- dumbass that I was -- I suggested that we smoke some marijuana.

That was a serious mistake. Because our short-term memory dropped to 30 seconds or so. I was cool with that, staring at the patterns in everything. But she was not. So I spent perhaps 3-4 hours reminding her that she was just wasted on acid and dope, and that she'd be fine tomorrow.

And she was. Except that she was no longer my girlfriend.

But whatever. Maybe you could have just reminded your grandfather that his short-term memory was hosed. And then assured him that you'd be back next week.

Wow seems a little unfair of her to dump you due to the results of purely her own demands.

Part of the dementia is that you lose the metacognition to understand that your short-term memory is hosed. We don't just become forgetful. We lose cognitive capacity. We're not ourselves minus the ability to remember things. We slowly become a different person.

Maybe so. I guess that I'll find out.

My point is that you will not.

Well, I already know that my short-term memory is somewhat hosed. So for stuff that matters to me, I leave myself notes. And for stuff that doesn't matter to me, I just forget. And that's actually better, in a way, because I'm more focused. And less distracted by guilt or whatever.

>I mean, if I'd forgotten that my whatever was dead, I'd like to be reminded. Not humored. Because that's so dehumanizing.

>And if I'm so far gone that I can't handle it, I'll probably forget about it all, fairly quickly.

Some people with dementia are absolutely convinced they're still in their mid-thirties. They think that their middle-aged children are still toddlers. They don't know why they're trapped in this strange place full of strange people, they just want to go home to their wife and kids, they want to go to work, they want to go for a beer with their buddies.

Imagine waking up tomorrow to discover that you're 40 years in the future, you're locked in a care home, your wife is dead, your friends are dead and your children are strangers. You look in the mirror and don't see your own face, but a stranger with wrinkled skin and missing teeth. Imagine that shock, that grief, that horror, repeated every single day for the rest of your life. Why am I here? What have they done to me? Why won't they let me see my wife? Why am I here? What have they done to me? Why won't they let me see my wife? No change, no progress, no learning, no acceptance, just an endless Groundhog Day of fear, confusion and grief.

I have a fairly dark imagination, but I cannot imagine a worse torture - to experience the worst day of your life, forever. Lying is the only humane thing we can do. Give Mr Q. a mop and a bunch of keys, tell him that his long-dead wife has just gone to visit her parents, let him believe something, anything better than the nightmare he is trapped in.

Well, I have the wrinkles (too much sun, and tobacco). And the missing teeth. And dead friends and family. Sometimes I feel like some poor zombie, trying to keep myself together. Like those women in Zemeckis' "Death Becomes Her".

But mostly I laugh about it. Or listen to Turbonegro's "All My Friends Are Dead" or "Hell Toupee".

I get that I'm atypical. ADHD and bipolar, or whatever. And/or maybe too much acid, back in the day.

And maybe that will change when I truly hit dementia.

> if I'd forgotten that my whatever was dead, I'd like to be reminded.

That's what I thought, too. But it causes severe, and pointless, suffering, which is cruel.

I don't remember where I read it but when asked about life after death, some dementia caregiver said looking at her patients she wasn't even sure of life before death. I have seen some friends parents with late stage dementia and it is horrifying. A significant percentage of caregivers for Alzheimer patients die before the patients. It is amazing that different parts of our bodies age at far different rates and some people are left with decrepit bodies and fine minds and for others it is the other way round.

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