A new behavior

This may not get better. I applaud you for caring about her appearance. This is not petty. It's important - very important if it's still important to her.

I don't see why you can't buy a commode for her with a mat around it. I also strongly recommend a picture on the bathroom door. I think care homes should do this automatically. Word recognition usually goes before visual photo recognition.

You are right to not want her to "depend" on incontinence products. My dad would wear them when I'd take him to the doctor since I couldn't get him into a men's bathroom (a whole post on its own), and he'd be angry when I'd tell him he was protected and he could just go. It's a really tough call. Your mom is still aware, so you are in a difficult transition phase. The time will come where she'll need incontinence protection. Is it now? I guess experiments will help and then you'll have to decide.

I'm glad you've found attractive clothes that still work for her disabilities. That is hard to do, but there are more products than there used to be.

Keep us posted, Jan. You are so caring and trying so hard. If the photo on the door and a commode don't work, you may have to go to incontinence wear, but I'd still try to put it off as long as possible.

Take care,

Carol

My mom recently went through the same exact thing. One of the attendents at the home caught in the act one night. During the night she would get up from her sleep lean on her bed with her head in her arms and urinate on the carpet. Then she would crawl back into bed and never recall the incident. 

One of the attendents, who had a lot of experience with alzeheimer's patients told us that we should take her to the Dr. and ask him to check Mom for  urinary tract infection and to check her electrolytes.

Eventhough Mom had no symptoms of a UTI, we had her checked for one. Mom was found to have a very severe urinary tract infection. Since she has received treatment for the UTI the floor wetting has stopped.

Good luck 

Hi Jan, I have read about what happened to your Mom in the home and I feel for you and her. I am sorry that the home failed to clean things up.
One thing I would recommened is to get her this under garment or adult diaper. She only needs to wear one a day treating it like an underwear. There are many types of adult diapers. My father-in-law is in stage 6 and he is not incontinent yet but he had started urinating improperly sometimes if he walked too slow in late 2007. So now everyday he has this adult diaper like an underwear and he only changes it in the morning. He still goes to the toilet like normal except that he sits down on the toilet. He had bad diaster back in 2007 ruining the carpet in the living room. He still lives at home with 24 hours home care.

I think if she uses this undergarment, everyone would be happy. Not that the home employees should not clean the mess on the carpet.

Hope this helps,

Nina

I realized you don't want to use the diaper, but I just want to add that my FIL is not in the stage of being incontinent, but he was like your Mom. He was so confused that he peed in the sink (he is tall.) Somehow the home care caregivers trained him again in late 2007 with the adult diaper as underwear (tell him it is underwear.) The real trick here is it is not used as a diaper, it is an underwear in his mind. He is able to go to the bathroom like before, just with this guard/protection. But he hates to pee into it as it gets wet on him, so he would rather go to the bathroom.

Just need to re-train the person. I think my father-in-law was confused at that time because the AD got worse on him at the beginning, then it settled down and got stable later on and he gets worse very slowly. Maybe he will get incontinent next year.

But using the diaper to train again could work out - the diaper here is NOT used as a real diaper, not that it does not help when he goes outside for a walk.

Nina

My sister did this.  She would use the trash can or whatever because she said she did not have a bathroom.  She lived at home at this time.  Even if you put depends on her I think she will still pull then down and go wherever since they are like underwear only heavier.  This is part of the disease. 

Even if you put a sign on the bathroom I am not sure that will help.  I tried putting signs around my sisters house for various things and it never worked.  But it is worth a try.  Anything to delay this horrible disease from taking everything away from them.