Tips for getting alzheimers patient into bed

Hi! I'm sorry for the difficulties you've been having.

My grandfather has recently had to move to using a walker, and my uncle placed tape marks on the floor that help to guide my grandfather into being in the right position to safely sit down. Bright red electrical tape, and it's worked like a dream. Perhaps giving her a target for her feet would assist in getting her close enough to the bed to sit down safely?

Best wishes, and let us know how things are going. :)

I really like the idea of a target.  This may be a longshot, but would she be able to step up on a stool.  Maybe some extra height (very safely positioned right next to the bed) would enable her to sit back a little further on the bed?

Let us know if you find something that works.  I know others must struggle with this as well.

I know exactly where the caregiver is at and it is extremely hard and can end up injuring her back if not very carefull.  I have a bad back and helped to take care of my Mother for 10 years and we had the same problem with the bathroom.  Having a potty chair (medicare will pay for one of these around every 5 years I believe it is?)that has the arms on it sometimes helps but we usually had to physically help her get her undies down and help her turn around and sit her down as easy as we possibly could but the target might help if she can understand that she needs to sit down, but my Mom almost never understood that she needed to sit down.  As for the getting into bed, if she is on medicare they wil pay for her a hospital bed and this can help tremendously but we ended up getting what they call a hoyer lift to lift Mom into the bed.  We would position it under her in her chair and lift her then get her over the bed and let her down on the bed right where we wanted her.  It was a life and back saver.  Then in the mornings we would roll her with the sheet and position the lift under the turn sheet so we didn't have the lift against her skin and roll her the other way and pull it all the way even under her then hook it up and lift her to her chair or the potty (if your going to the potty you don't want to have the lift under the sheet, it needs to be on top of the sheet. and for us it was easier to not have undies of any kind on her when using the lift to go potty.  Depends are great if she is still up and around but we found that as it got harder to get her on the potty it was easier to do no undies and just put one of the blue or whatever color flat pads under her and give it our best shot.  It was better than fighting with the undies when she was needing to go and she wouldn't let us get them down and we were trying to keep her from falling while trying to sit her down.    I hope this helps.  The hoyer lift was a true God send. It helps to save at least some of your energy.   Take care of yourself too.  Sincerely, HJP

Anonymous - HJP - thank you for your story! That lift sounds like it was a real help to you. That was great information to share. I hope we'll see you around more!