Question
Asked by Lin da
Alzhiemers Patents And Rage.
My mother has alziehmers and has outbursts of rage. She screams and throws things and then appears to faint and sleeps for long periods of time.s this common?
Answer
Hi, Lin da,
This seems to be common. In their wonderful book, "The 36-Hour Day", Nancy Mace and Peter Rabins note that peopoelw ith brain diseases may experience rapidly changing moods and can become excessively upset, even overreacting. They call the term "catastrophic reaction," noting that the reaching may seem inappropriate over such a little thing.
My mom also experienced outbursts of rage. I experienced her rage one time immediately prior to her diagnosis with Alzheimer's. She was staying with me after experiencing severe health problems. I was really focused on trying to stabilize her health as well as work and attend graduate school. She got picky about my not dusting the dining room table (which was passed down to me from her aunt). I lost my temper (which I seldom do) and told her that I would dust it but in the grand scheme of things, a thin layer of dust was not the most important thing in my life right then. She was fine then, but had a major outburst later that day. I had gone to school and had hired an aide to sit with her. Midway through class, my cell phone rang. I went out in the hallway and answered. It was the aide saying my mother wanted to talk to me. Mom got on the phone and said, "If you don't get home in 10 minutes, I'm going to start breaking things." She was yelling at me so loudly that others could hear her. I was stunned, and assured Mom I would be home shortly. When I got home, she preceeded to disown me and told me that I had to ship the table and other items to her back in West Texas (where she and Dad had lived) the next day. I left the room to let her cool down. A short bit later, she was friendly again, asking me to take her dog out before she went to bed.
After this experience, I developed a hypothesis that seemed to hold up (at least in Mom's case). I believe that people with Alzheimer's really take their cues from our emotions and then adopt those behaviors. I found that if I visited Mom in the nursing home and she was in a rage, she'd calm down if I'd wheel her to another area and then sit calmly with her. I learned to adopt a "Zen attitude" that seemed to diffuse her rage.
I hope this helps. Take care and keep us posted!
Dorian