Taking Away the Car from Mom – Part 1
I think everyone with a dementia patient in the family has had to deal with the car issue. When a person gets to the point they should not be driving, it may be obvious to others, but not them.
In Mom’s situation her Alzheimer’s and dementia have been gradual. When she moved in with us, her car came with her. It was a 1998 Plymouth Neon, and Mom had always been very proud of it. She started out doing some driving, but she had a lot of trouble navigating the country roads where we live.
Mom got to the point where she didn’t WANT to drive, so I wasn’t too worried. We were always available to take her where she needed to go. The only time she would drive was to go to the end of our driveway to meet the kids when the school bus dropped them off (our driveway is almost a quarter of a mile). I thought it was harmless, and that it would help her keep a schedule and feel needed.
One time I needed to go out of town for a few days for work. I asked Mom to drive the kids to the end of the drive in the mornings like I usually do. One morning they got out there too late and missed the bus. Mom tried to drive down the road to catch up to it. She was going way faster that she normally would, and she almost lost control on the loose gravel. The car was fishtailing and son (who was 11 at the time) had to tell her to put on her brakes.
After that episode we strongly discouraged her from driving, and she acted like she wouldn’t. Every now and then she would talk about driving, but I would gently remind her of the problems she had before. She continued to drive down the drive to meet the kids for awhile, but on many days she got her time confused and missed them. The kids told me when she did meet them, she had trouble turning around and acted very nervous. At that point we told Mom the kids would just walk down the drive themselves (a little exercise and fresh air is good for them, anyway).
Mom kept her keys and would occasionally go out to clean off the car, but she didn’t try to drive. I mentioned this situation in an Alzheimer’s support group meeting, and some of the group members strongly urged me to take the keys. They had had experiences where Alzheimer’s patients they didn’t think would try to drive did try. I knew Mom would not give up her keys without a fight, so I tried to find a different way to keep her from trying to drive.
It soon came time for her to renew her registration. She misplaced the form that was sent in the mail, so that gave me an excuse to put off renewing it. When she finally did find it, I had a heart-to-heart discussion with her about her driving. I told her it had been several months since she had driven on the roads, and it would be a waste of her money to renew the registration. She insisted that she might want to try to drive again once she was more familiar with the roads. I continued to put off going to the license branch because I knew she would not try to drive with expired plates.
Then, came the day she decided to drive to the mail box. I was at work, but the kids were home. She asked my son to get in the car with her to go down the drive. She drove down, mailed the letter and came back. Then, about an hour later, she had Tyler get in the car again to go see if the mail came (she has a fear of people stealing her mail from our mailbox). Both times she went down the drive, the car was not acting right. Tyler was very uncomfortable because she was agitated about the car and because she had missed the mailman.
When we came home and learned about the incident, my husband and I went to check out her car. It turns out that it had been sitting so long the emergency brake had locked on one of the back tires. She had gone down the drive and back two times while dragging one of the tires! A chunk of tread was missing and wires were visible on the tire. This made me realize that it was very unsafe to leave her with the keys, and that as a dementia patient she has really lost a lot of judgment and problem-solving skills. We were fortunate that she didn’t try to go somewhere (especially with our son) and blow out the tire and have a wreck.
Mom asked us to have her car fixed. We put off the repairs while we figured out how to handle this situation…
September 22nd, 2009 at 12:44 pm
I think the driving issue has to be one of the scariest. I have a relative who is quickly deteriorating from dementia. When family members sat her down and told her they were taking away the car it was a really difficult experience. I’m interested in reading part 2 to see what worked for you.