What I wonder about is his dementia diagnosis. Do you know specifically what type of dementia he has? This might help you and the staff in the Memory Care facility know more about how to help him adjust. Also, if they can find a task for him and ask him to do this task every day to "help these poor folks with Alzheimer's" maybe he would feel like he had a purpose and a place there. Lastly, a piece of advice someone gave me recently - come up with a stock response to his complaints and questions and repeat it verbatim every time. Eventually this phrase will sink into his impaired memory and he may begin to think of it as his idea. Keep it simple and don't explain too much. Could be something like "the doctor says this is the best place for you right now" or some such explanation. Hope that helps.
My father has been living in the memory unit of an Assisted Living facility for about a year. He does not have Alzeimer's but has a terrible memory and psychiatric problems. Before he lived there, we had him at a different assisted living facility with a full-time aide. His money was disappearing rapidly, and we thought this move would be a good idea, because he would get the care he needed at half the cost. The problem is that the symptoms of the Alzeimer's patients upset him. He is complaining that he can't stay there and that he is going to run away. He asks me why I don't just get him a furnished room. When he speaks like that I know he has no sense of reality, and can't take care of himself. Because of his psychiatric problems and some dementia, he can't live unsupervised in standard assisted living. Does anyone have any suggestions for other living arrangements?
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