When Mom’s Alzheimer’s Made Her Obsessed About Sex
Feeling embarrassed and wanting to avoid embarrassment is normal, but if we focus only on how we feel, we may end up secluding our loved ones and robbing them of their desire to socialize. When I quit worrying about my mother’s words, I freed her and myself.
July 25, 2024
Christine Mungai is a caregiver to her mother who lives with Alzheimer’s and is the author of “The Wounded in Our Midst”
My mother was no shrinking violet; she was very outgoing, and her personality had a balanced intensity before dementia affected her. However, I wasn’t ready for the unbridled behavior which would send me recoiling in embarrassment. As cognitive function declines in people living with dementia, they stop subscribing to social norms like maintaining some level of decorum while interacting with others, especially in social gatherings. I was paranoid and tried never to leave her side so I could rephrase or, in some cases, apologize for any unexpected utterances. I struggled with accepting her new no-filter approach because I found it hard to reconcile who she now was versus who I had known her to be. It was only when I noticed that some of my friends and her doctor found her candor refreshing and, at times, funny that I started loosening up.
A few minutes into a meal with a family friend, I noticed she’d barely touched her food. When I prompted her to eat, she turned to me, a little irritated, and said: “I can’t eat. The food is so tasteless.” I was stunned by her loudness; I quickly scanned the room to see if anyone had heard her. Indeed the food was very bland, but I didn’t think her palate would trump her hunger. We were guests, and I didnt want to offend the host so although I was full, I quickly put her food on my plate so she could move on to dessert.
Just when I was just starting to get comfortable with her outspokenness, her behavior turned up a notch, and she started to overly compliment men — including my friends, our relatives, and even her doctor — letting them know how handsome they were. I don’t know whether I was embarrassed because of her boldness or my lack of it.
My close friend, also a caregiver, witnessed an even bigger display of wild abandon by her mother, who is religious and very conservative. She was given the microphone to congratulate a couple during their wedding ceremony and she told the couple they should have a lot of sex and good sex. My friend watched in horror as the very pious villagers shifted embarrassedly in their seats; her mother, on the other hand, took no notice of the crowd’s discomfort, and carried on.
The topic of sex came up with my mother so often that I became unperturbed by it. However, during an appointment with her physician, he gave her a cognitive test and asked her to identify objects. He held up a pen for her to identify, and she responded that it was a penis. That was the day I discovered there was a name for what she was going through: Klüver-Bucy syndrome [a rare neuropsychiatric disorder due to lesions in the brain that can cause “hypersexuality”].
Feeling embarrassed and wanting to avoid embarrassment is normal, but if we focus only on how we feel, we may end up secluding our loved ones and robbing them of their desire to socialize. When I quit worrying about my mother’s words, I freed her and myself. If some chose to take offense, that was their choice; if others found her refreshing and good company, that was their choice too.
Even when those living with dementia can no longer have logical conversations with us, they still desire to interact and be heard. Unfortunately, we live in a world where social acceptance has so many invisible barriers to entry that the whole essence of socializing loses its meaning in trying to scale them. Everyone has quirks — for some, they are just more pronounced.
