Table 2 Quotes exemplary of caregivers’ inability to leave person with dementia unsupervised
Caregiver characteristics | |
|---|---|
Inability to leave person with dementia unsupervised as a barrier to their socialization | |
“She’s gonna have to have love and nothing but lovin’ people around her. Because she would ask you the same question. You gonna get questions from her. As of late, she asks you the same question 15 times. You know, and it takes a lot of patience.” | ID03: 59-year-old daughter |
“If I was to leave and be gone for a week, I don’t know what she would do or who she would talk to.” | ID05: 67-year-old spouse |
“There is days where, or there is times where during the day I have to take a deep break … and I have to remember that she has Alzheimer’s, she has dementia. I have to remember that. Because some of the things she says you know, it’s a constant. It’s a constant. And then every day is the same.” | |
Inability to leave person with dementia unsupervised as a barrier to caregiver self-care | |
“My mother will go in the refrigerator and pick up anything, eat it, it be done or undone, you know. And you just gotta make sure, you know. Cause she’ll pick up some hamburger undone and eat it there—come on now. So, you have to watch her, you have to keep close contact on her.” | ID03: 59-year-old daughter |
“We’ll have a six pack, and you’ll look around and she will have grabbed the bottles of pop and she’ll drink three of them. By the time you look back again she’s got the other two! I say, ‘I can’t turn my back on you!’ You know? [laughs]. You can’t do it!” | ID04: 64-year-old son |
“I’m runnin’ on trial by error. But I’m also now runnin’ on like ‘Nahhhh Imma go with you.’ And if she wants to go somewhere, then we go. So I don’t have a schedule.” | ID05: 67-year-old spouse |
“But right now, I really get nervous about leaving her at home by herself. Not so much now, because she hasn’t gotten that urge to go. She wants to go somewhere, but she hasn’t gotten that urge to just get up and go on her own.” | |
“In order for me to feel safe to leave him with the kids, they’d all have to be asleep. I’d have to make sure that no one would be able to wake up until I came back upstairs because once I get home I can’t leave the kids and [NAME] by themselves. It worries me that, first that he might do something like turn on the stove, you know? But second, that if, because they are children that are 7 and 3, if they do anything that aggravates him, will he become violent. So I can’t, and I have to.” | ID12: 50-year-old spouse |