My dad has vascular dementia. His mind (I believe) is twisting things around. He says one of his caregivers shouts at him and even threw his breakfast across the room. The thing is that when he was in a facility (now at home), I know HE used to do that. It's like this brain can't sort what he does versus what is being done to him.
I trust this caregiver but will put it a camera just to protect all parties.
Has anyone else experienced this??
My mom, (stage 6 Alzheimer's), accuses everyone of everything, me included. Dementia patients are distrustful of everyone, accusing people of mistreating them, stealing from them, physically harming them, are being mean to them.
Mom is also very hard of hearing so we have to literally scream to communicate. She will "twist" things around to make it my or someone else's fault. She says she doesn't have a big appetite but eats like a horse (full dinner plate of food plus dessert). She says she's talked to her mother a couple of days ago but in the next breath tells me her mother is dead, she will not believe that I am her daughter no matter how much information I provide to prove the point, she repeats things up to 50 times a day, she claims that someone has put "itching powder" in her clothes and demands to know where the clothes came from and who washes them (she bought the clothes and hubby or I wash them).
Many things get confused or are continually repeated. I am learning the fine art of ignoring certain things she says.
As for the video camera, not a bad idea. Better yet if you can hook it up to an IPhone and watch in real time (if that's possible).
HOWEVER, even if the video shows no maltreatment of your father at all, DON'T think he's going to buy that. You can show him the recording but he will come up with many excuses as to why the bad treatment didn't record. At least you'll have peace of mind that your dad isn't being abused but, depending on his level of confusion, he probably will insist it happens.
My feeling was always that when a parent is in a facility, there are many eyes on the situation; at home, there is only one.
In the first year of her dementia she accused almost every caregiver she had of maltreatment. After each new aide showed up she would yell at me: I WANT YOU TO FIRE HER! Whenever she would complain about the aide, I would ask her what the aide was doing that hurt her. She would always respond: I don't know! Which made it easy to attribute her complaints to further attempts to get me to fire aides.
I never saw any signs of abuse from the aides that she complained about, and those aides were all really nice and seemingly trustworthy. They never stayed long, and then after we would get a new aide, she would say she wanted the last aide to come back.
I read recently that some people take advantage of dementia patients' proclivity to say things that sound outrageous.
Install the camera.
Get one that records sound, if your dad is accusing the aide of verbal abuse.
I don't know how admissible in court the recording would be - that would depend on the laws of the state you live in. But at least you would know for certain, and could take the action of firing and reporting the aide, if abuse is occurring.
I don't know how long your dad has been at home, but I've found that after three years of taking care of my own mother at home while she's suffered from dementia, eventually I've learned to discern between the outrageous stuff she says, the confusion tricks her mind plays on her and the accurate things she says.
I have noticed that when aides, nurses and doctors visit, they always shout or raise their voice at my mother, as a matter of practice. A lot of their patients refuse to wear hearing aids, so I think the inclination is for people in the elder care community to assume that their patient will need them to speak loudly in order for them to be heard. Your father might be mistaking his caregiver's loud voice for being yelled at.
And it might be, that if the caregiver was handing him food, and he tried to push the tray out of her hands, that in his mind she threw the tray.
Or he might be reporting to you accurately.
Install the camera. It's really the only way you'll know for sure what the truth is.