Getting my husband with dementia to take a shower. It’s been 22 months since his last one! Any tips?

My resolution, is not without a bit of a struggle.

My husband is a broken record referring everything he hears, or is asked, to his happy memories of his service in the Navy. And he also detests showers.

I turn on the shower to warm it up. I let him know, every other day, that it's time for a shower. Griping all the way, in his I-better-watch-out voice, he tells me how ridiculous this is, it's stupid, and I can be sure this is the last time. This has been going on for over a year. I've reminded him how he loves how he feels afterwards, how sparkly he looks and most importantly that it takes less than 10 minutes.

My latest tactic has been to repeat the same set of questions about the showers in the Navy. Did he have a private shower or did he share a big shower room. Did the Navy provide soap, was there a schedule, etc. In between gripes he answers me like I'm the biggest idiot and sh*t and he sends daggers with his eyes, but he's distracted and washes what I direct him to wash in between questions.

Our process - I'm ready with some shampoo in my left hand and tell him to close his eyes because I'm going to wet his head, and then I pat the right amount of shampoo on to the top of his head. I tell him to work the shampoo. He's shooting his mouth off but he's doing it. In the meantime I wet a wash cloth in warm water in the sink and pump liquid 3-in-1 soap on to it. I hand it to him and tell him to wash his face.

Often I take the sprayer off its holder to help him rinse off. I rinse out the wash cloth at the sink and repeat the routine down to his ankles. He needs to hear a caring voice especially when he's disturbed, I'm not feeling it but it's necessary, so I ask if the temperture is comfortable although I know it is, and I know that everything in the dang world to him is too this, and too that, and everything particularly when he's riled is physically uncomfortable. After he washes his face, I say, oh boy my favorite part, I love to wash your big strong back, man it's like washing a drive-in movie screen so big. He's not a big man and has dwindle down to a little young teenager in stature but he doesn't say a word when I say that. He is humbly maveling at the compliment. To his mind it's true and a largess to permit me to wash his back. It works for 3 seconds.

As long as I can I'm going to keep him involved with washing himself, handing him soaped up wash clothes and rinsing them until that time that I may have to do the entire job. For now I supervise. Lately though I've begun to wash his feet because he won't/can't. His bottom is often washed a couple of times, unless he allows, begrudgingly, my intrusion during his toileting to remind him to use a butt wipe after using T.P. This helps that part of the showering from being a major show stopper.

It's a gigantic pain to help him but even more so to deal with his mouth, vocalized resistance, and threats. I don't know how long it will continue to be only this difficult. Btw, I do his pedicure. He likes that.

When the time comes I'm going to get a man to do the job if my sweetheart completely shuts down. Maybe a sumo. I'm sure he's not going to give him grief.

Dementia patients are sometimes afraid of the running water, the sound of it, the way their skin feels when water touches it. Often they’ve lost all sense of what water is or does. My mother was afraid to brush her teeth because she had no idea what a toothbrush was and thought it was trying to harm her. Any kind of reasoning with such a patient is useless. Just tossing this into the discussion because people tend to believe dementia patients still have the same norms and thought processes as we do. They don’t. They’re in a different world.

While the conservatorship & other paperwork is being worked out, are there funds for his Sister to employ a home care agency aide? 2-3 times a week would give routine.

Introduce the Helper, for light housekeeping & laundry etc. Then helping change clothes to be washed, then bathing assistance is added in.

Showering is such a common battle! Even the best experienced aides sometimes can't get it done. But it does get done in rehab & MC as others point out. Seen it so many times myself too.

Refuse refuse refuse for family. But will give in for staff.

When my parents weren't bathing because they thought they had. I hired home health to come help them. They accepted their help better than mine.
He isn't doing this on purpose. He doesn't have the cognitive ability anymore. He thinks he has and can't remember that he hasn't. It could be helpful to you to find a seminar on caring for someone with Alzheimer's. I wish I had known what I know now when I was caring for my parents. It would have made it much easier. The option is not always to put them in a facility. You can search online for information on caring for someone with Alzheimer's. He may not even remember how to take a shower and need some prompting. Check into your local area agency on aging for respite services and you may be able to get someone to come in and help her out.

He needs to be in a memory care facility. To let him manipulate you in these ways indicates that the family is not able to properly care for him. Good luck.

Obviously, your husband can't be cared at home anymore. He needs professional nursing care.

Whoever has POA for your husband needs to have him placed in a care facility.

I have POA but my son is in the process of getting conservatorship over him as we speak. Till then, I was hoping for ideas to at least getting him cleaned up for the painful, transition for him and us into memory care.

Perhaps we assume wrongly that there is no alternative to showers?

I’ve been reading about hygiene in Elizabethan England. Warm showers were impossible for around 1500 years after the Romans left. Baths were difficult but not impossible.

Carting the water, heating it up, pouring it into a bath, then emptying the bath, was not easy unless you had servants to do it for you. Add to that, the water was often polluted, and people believed that infections could enter the body through the pores and body orifices.

Instead middle and upper class people used ‘rubbers’, which were linen cloths that were warmed (by servants) and rubbed over the body to remove the sweat so that it didn’t go stale and smelly. It was done at least once a day, and was done to clean the hair, too. It was also normal to have a clean linen shirt every day. They ‘washed’ in linen, not water! Being smelly was a social disaster, not so different from now.

We have a Covid poster for desert people about ‘washing’ their hands in sand, with pictures on how to do it thoroughly. DH says he did that himself when he was honorary mechanic on a school trip to the outback and got grease all over his hands. Soap and water isn’t the only way.

This is so common with people who have dementia. My mom would never take another shower if we didn't make her do it. Sometimes she does it willingly, but other times she screams "I hate you," or says she took one that morning when we know she did not because she NEVER remembers how to turn on the showerhead. Promising to take her out to dinner works best for us.
If there is something he enjoys, take it away unless he complies. Some people might disagree with that, but whatever it takes. I write on her calendar when she takes a shower, so I can show her how long it has been.