Can you say that again...NOT

Well, my grandma doesn't repeat words, but she does repeat questions! With her, it's mostly a matter of that she'll get really hung up (almost obsessive) on something irrelevant (like "Do you want to come and get your hair washed when I go to the beauty parlor?" or "Are there any good movies playing now"), but keeps forgetting either that she asked the question, or--if she does remember that she asked it--what the answer was. Unfortunately, as she gets worse, the intervals of her asking the questions get shorter and shorter. (The current record, I believe, is asking the "hairdresser" question six times in a less-than-thirty-minute trip!) And yeah, it can get really frustrating: I freely admit that there are times when we've been in the car (when I can't get away from her) that I've lost my temper and told her not only the answer, but how many times I've given it to her that day! So trust me, you're not alone with either the issue or the frustration.

In terms of advice for how to deal with it...I might not be the best person to ask. I tend to deal with things by using VERY dark humor, and so does my mom (who is my grandma's main caregiver), so a lot of how we deal with things would probably be very offensive to lots of people. But, yeah, if you can handle dark humor...*shrugs* sometimes you either have to laugh or cry, and personally, I'd rather laugh (most of the time).

Good luck with your m-i-l!

Thanks Grandchick, and I , like you, have discovered that humor is the best way out of a repeat situation. One day Ma was on her gravy kick and I was trying everything to get her off of it but she kept going back to gravy. Finally I said" well I suppose that you want GRAVY inscribed on your tombstone" and she says : yep, but not anytime soon!"...    Atleast she still has her funny bone intact.

LOL, I like that! With my mom and me, it's mostly a matter of joking ABOUT my grandma (rather than WITH her) for stress relief. The other day, we spent  seven hours straight with my grandma, helping her buy stuff so she (by which I mean we!) could throw her other, baby granddaughter a birthday party. At every stop--and usually more than once per stop--she'd ask "Did we buy birthday cards?" and at every stop, we'd tell her "No, at the card store." (We needed to add the "card store" part, because when we just said "No" she'd ask if we should buy them wherever we were...including the restaurant doing the catering!) After we went to the card store, of course, the answer changed to "Yes, we did." And still, she kept asking! I stopped counting at somewhere between 15 and 20, but I know she asked more times than that. Finally, we dropped her off at home (where her aide was waiting), and as my mom watched through the window to make sure my grandma made it safely into her building, she looked at me out of the corner of her eye and asked "Are you sure we bought birthday cards?!" Which, yeah, sounds kind of mean, until you realize that it was do that, or do what I've done, which is wait until my grandma gets out of the car, and then SCREAM! And, I say from personal experience...laughter is easier on your throat!

I don't think it is mean at all. We have to be able to find the humor in life or else we would be in trouble. I loved that story. Are you sure you bought the cards?   My mother in law is confind to the home so I don't have to reanswer those kind of questions anymore, but have diffenetly been there and done that,haha..

Everyone who knows me jokes with me about gravy, since they all know just how often Ma ask for it. For her the norm is about every 4-6 minutes, so it can get pretty overwhelming without laughter. Last week me and my 12 yr old were putting the Christmas tree up and in the 40 minutes it took us to get it up Ma requested Gravy for Christmas atleast 10 times. My son said  we should buy those little packs of gravy to decorate the tree for Grammy, see even kids use humor.