From: olivercranglejr@gmail.com   
      
   Alzheimer's Disease - Stealing, Rummaging, and Hoarding   
    More information related to this Podcast   
   Transcript:   
   Sally Smith:  Welcome to Age to Age.  I'm Sally Smith.  Let's talk.  Fran   
   Emerson is with us today.  Fran is the Charleston area program director for   
   the Alzheimer's Association and has vast knowledge, and very practical   
   knowledge, about Alzheimer's,    
   dementia, and related caregiving.  She has shared some amazing insights with   
   us.  Fran, one of the things I love the most about the way you train people   
   for caregiving is this wonderful attitude you have about looking at things in   
   a different way.   
       
   One of the things that came to mind when I was speaking to you earlier was the   
   memory of my mother.  She had lived a life where she did not, in any way, need   
   to shoplift, or do anything like that, and was the loveliest lady you'd ever   
   met.  On a few    
   occasions, however, we'd she her slipping a little silver spoon, her own   
   silver spoon, in her own house, into her pocket in sort of a clandestine way.    
   We just couldn't understand what that meant.  It was her own house, her own   
   spoon, but she would slip    
   it into her pocket.  I notice that you have a different way of looking at some   
   of these behaviors that make it more forgivable and easier to live with.    
       
   I think you said that taking things is one of these behaviors that is common   
   and has sort of a different origin in the mind of the person who has the   
   dementia.  Could you tell us what this stealing is associated with?   
       
   Fran Emerson:  Yeah.  Okay.  Well, the first thing we've got to realize is   
   that shoplifting or taking things, or stealing, requires quite a complex   
   thought process.  You've got to plan it.  You've got to decide what you want   
   to take.  You've got to    
   execute it.  Now, someone with dementia does not have the ability to plan and   
   execute such a complicated process as that.  So, if you see someone putting a   
   silver spoon in their pocket, taking something off the shelf in a store and   
   putting it in a bag,    
   or going into another resident's room and picking something up and taking it,   
   they're simply collecting things.  They're simply shopping.  There's no   
   intent.    
       
   One of the positive things about dementia is that any evil intent is simply   
   not a possibility because that requires too much of a complicated thought   
   process.  So, if someone's doing something, they're not being malicious, evil,   
   or criminally minded.     
   They're simply shopping.   
       
   Sally Smith:  They're simply shopping.  And you had another wonderful thing   
   about rummaging.    
       
   Fran Emerson:  Rummaging, yes.  I mean, take our lives.  I'm getting up in the   
   morning and I want to find an item of clothing, what do I do?  I open a drawer   
   and rummage through and find it.  Rummaging is not something that's peculiar   
   to people with    
   dementia.  We all do it.  We do it every day.  But, people with dementia can   
   do it more.  It's normal.  They're sorting things.  They're rummaging through   
   belongings and sorting things.  It's a simple activity.  It's often a very   
   meaningful activity, and    
   a pleasurable activity.   
       
   Sally Smith:  And it's another one of those examples of, so what?   
       
   Fran Emerson:  Yes.   
       
   Sally Smith:  So, rummage all day.  What about hoarding?   
       
   Fran Emerson:  Hoarding is a very interesting one.  Sometimes you're in a   
   restaurant and you see someone take a few of those little packets of   
   sweetener, and that's people without dementia.  It's collecting.  People are   
   collecting things.  When my family    
   and I went to my mother's flat, or apartment, in England, after she moved into   
   a residential home, to clear her belongings, we found plastic bag after   
   plastic bag, and papers bags, full of coins, hundreds of pounds, or dollars,   
   worth of coins.    
       
   My mother, obviously, had collected this over a period of time, for whatever   
   reason.  And, you know, is it important what the reason is?  Probably not.    
   But she was hoarding this for a reason.  Perhaps she felt she needed to have   
   money available.  You    
   know, anybody brought up in the Depression, or during wartime...   
       
   Sally Smith:  Good point.    
       
   Fran Emerson:  So, she needed to collect that.   
       
   Sally Smith:  I know that well.  I do think that people who went through the   
   War, certainly my parents, my mother, and the Depression were vaccinated for   
   life with the feeling of making sure you had enough for the rainy day.  There   
   was this sense of    
   saving things.  I will say, one lovely thing about my mother, she used to say,   
   in her wise days, you children tease me about my saving these things, but   
   anytime you need something, you come to me, and I'll say, oh, I think we have   
   one of those; I think    
   we can get you that, then you're thrilled.    
       
   What about this wonderful term, eloping?   
       
   Fran Emerson:  Oh, eloping.  You know, as a person from England, I always get   
   a kick of this because when I first came to this country, twelve years ago,   
   and was associated with dementia-specific facilities, I was actually a   
   marketing person.  The    
   administrator came into my office one day, quite agitated, and said, Mrs.   
   So-and-so has eloped.  You know, to me, eloping is someone going to Gretna   
   Green in Scotland.   
       
   Sally Smith:  Exactly, to get married.   
       
   Fran Emerson.  To get married, without the permission of their parents.  So, I   
   got a big kick out of that.  So, elopement?  So, someone has left the   
   building, like Elvis; Elvis has left the building.  So, do we say that people   
   have eloped, except in a    
   facility setting where someone has left the building and you don't where they   
   are?  It may be a secure facility and they've followed someone out the door, a   
   visitor, and they have eloped.   
       
   Now, the person with dementia isn't eloping.  They're not going to go and get   
   married, and they're not, necessarily, intentionally escaping a situation   
   because they can't work it out.  They're going somewhere.  They're probably   
   going home, a home that    
   existed some time ago, maybe in their teens, their childhood; they're going   
   home.   
       
      
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    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)