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My sympathies to you dealing with your parents or spouse under these conditions. No suggestions, just a plea that if I ever get like that please, please , please just put me in a nursing home where no one I love has cope with it. Or "pull the plug" whenever the opportunity arises.
Move out and leave his funky behind in the house. People with mental illness always pull this trick and expect their relatives to just live with it. Our mother was like this and the mental authorities had to take over. It is not normal to not have a personal pride about oneself. He needs professional help.
Ewww. I feel for ya, OP, I really do.
My S.O. works 12 hour shifts in a kitchen, and comes home and DOESN'T SHOWER. EVER. I'm lucky if she showers twice a week. He's fine, no brain malfunctions (medically that is lol) and I've told him time and time again, you f-ing stink to high heaven, do not get into that bed without washing! He throws a fit and leaves the rest ofvthe night, which getd me a nice smelling house again.
Really though, from what it sounds like, he might have more brain problems than what you're aware of. You might want to get some tests done. And the uncleanliness to THAT extent could cause some serious issues. Lesions, cysts, fungus, other bacterial infections. Does he brush his teeth?
Not taking regular showers or baths or not realizing that you have body odor is not an unusual problem with people with dementia/brain damage/Alzheimer's .
My wife's step-mother, now in her 70's, has Alzheimer's and is in an assisted living facility. They have the same problem with her refusing to bathe. She has gotten to the point where she won't even change her clothes or let anyone touch her. Needless to say, she is very difficult to be around.
I don't go there much anymore because she no longer knows who I am. She still knows who my wife is as she brings them groceries and things. We have all kind of accepted that the step-mother is just progressing down the path of that disease and there isn't much they can do for it.
I just posted something similar. I'm one of my dad's caregivers and he refuses to shower. Sometimes we'll talk him into one every three months or so. It's pretty bad.
I know to some people, this may sound X rated, but it's worth a try. Has your mom suggested to your dad to maybe shower together? I know many men like that idea. It may just work to get him to shower more.
My father has never been the most hygienic person and now that he is older it has really gotten bad :-(
I remember when I had to clean out his bedroom downstairs because we had to move Mom downstairs due to her dementia. He had dirty diapers just thrown everywhere (and yes I had bought him a diaper pail months earlier....he just wouldn't use it) and piles of soiled clothes and papers everywhere. Every trip I made out there (was going there every two months for 3-4 week periods) I would try to clean up and buy him new sheets, clothes etc. But each time I returned I returned to a mess and him stinking!
We finally got him to agree to go on an antidepressant and that helped a bit. Plus we now have full time caregivers in the home for Mom so he cleans up around the house a little more.....but he still refuses to take showers on a consistent basis. When I am there I will tell him that I won't (or really can't) drive him anywhere because the smell makes me sick. That usually will give him some incentive to shower. But he still won't change his diapers as often as he needs to and will then sit on fabric seats (the time before my last trip I had even recovered all their dining chairs...should have went with vinyl) leaving them wet! We try to tell him it is not fair for the caregivers to have to be around this. So for a short period he will be a little better but then he resorts back to his old ways. Just a week ago, because he was told again, he put a calendar up on the fridge and will now mark the days he showers. We will see how that goes!
My parents are in their late 70s. In the past, they were both very attractive and "fashionable," as well as neat and clean. They are what I would call "upper middle class" and have been professionals all of their lives, just for some perspective.
My dad is still a very dapper dresser, but he would be the first to tell you that his sense of smell is not what it used to be, and boy do I believe it. Honestly, sometimes his breath would knock a rhino off his feet! He also seems to have a lot of dandruff, which I don't really understand but there it is. And I think we all know what "dirty head" smells like. But at least my dad is aware that these things can be an issue so all I really need to do is gently tell him, and he gets a horrified look on his face and takes off for the bathroom to clean himself up.
But it's my mom who is the real problem. She has some dementia (mild) that is not Alzheimer's so it's not relentlessly or quickly progressive. She could stay in this mild form of dementia for years, or take a sudden turn for the worse, who knows? But meanwhile, she is easily confused and blissfully unaware of many of her new oddities. One of them is personal grooming. Recently I have noticed a distinctly acidic odor to her - it doesn't smell like urine, and it doesn't smell exactly like body odor - it just smells WEIRD and definitely body related somehow. My dad simply cannot smell this for some weird reason, but it knocks me out when I'm around her and there's some component to this odor that literally makes me feel sick to my stomach. This is a new turn of events.
So I asked my dad to try to gently ask her about her personal grooming habits, and she told him that she "takes a bath every Saturday." WHAT THE HECK!!!! She also told him that she wears adult pads (not really diapers) because she "leaks" sometimes. And then finally, her hair looks and smells downright dirty. So I think it's a combination of these three elements and it is driving me crazy!!!!
To add insult to injury, she doesn't seem to notice when her clothing is dirty, and my dad seems oblivious to this as well. I had to tell him the other day that mom had worn the same clothes for FIVE DAYS IN A ROW. I couldn't believe he hadn't noticed this.
This is heart breaking to me because prior to the last year or so, my mom was very attune to putting herself together well and accessorizing. Now she still has an interest in it, but her choices are looking weirder and weirder. For instance, she wore Mardi Gras beads to church last week. And her hair is very, very thick and stark white. When she was more in tune to her grooming, she kept her hair well coiffed. Now it looks like a wild mop of white hair that's often dirty and unkempt.
I can't say anything to her because she gets very hurt and sad and angry and defensive, which I guess would be a normal reaction. So I'm just letting her do what she wants to do. She gets embarrassed if family mentions things to her, but she doesn't really change the way she dresses or grooms herself, and it doesn't seem to embarrass her to carry herself this way in public, so I'm just going to let her rip. I think it's pretty obvious to everyone she interacts with at this point that she's addled and probably dealing with dementia (which she is).
That's what dementia does unfortunately. My mom was so meticulous about being clean, sometimes taking 2 or3 showers a day. Towards the end she would rarely shower and only if we basically made her.
I think it's the cold and the amount of time rather than a few minutes of showering that it used to take.
Location: Los Angeles>Little Rock>Houston>Little Rock
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My husband always said he wouldn't bathe because he didn't want to be cold.
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