Full Episode Transcript

Sue Ryan: Your loved one has dementia, but they’re still driving. In this episode, we’re sharing 4 main tips about planning, preparing, and yes, eventually removing the privilege of driving.

 

Sue Ryan: The 4 tips we’re going to share is first, to understand the legal and insurance considerations in our locations, and they vary by location. The second one is around tracking, tracking our loved one, tracking the vehicle. The third one is about following and or riding along and eventually taking over driving. And the final one is eventually removing all the driving privileges.

 

Sue Ryan: Are you ready?

 

Nancy Treaster: I’m ready.

 

Sue Ryan: Let’s have this candid conversation. We’re going to start it with safety and safety is the best place to start, because one of the first things that naturally worries us as a caregiver is whether it’s safe for our loved one with dementia to drive. And we’re probably concerned about them, for example, for they’re going to be getting lost, which is completely understandable. However, the first focus on safety is really for the safety of others in the car as well, others on the road, and when we’re the other person in the car, it’s on us as well as our caregiver.

 

Sue Ryan: And it’s very, very important for us to consider several things when we talk about the whole area of safety with dementia as things begin to go away, that we remember some of the things that they may no longer have access to are some of the different rules of the road. How to obey traffic lights, how to follow the speed limits. Maybe they’re going 35 in a 65 mile an hour zone. Maybe they’re going 65 in a 35 mile an hour zone.

 

Sue Ryan: Decision-making also slows down. Can they react to different weather conditions, to other cars, to things that are happening? Are they able to pay attention to everything that’s going on around them, process it, and make the wisest choice, and do it in what often needs to be in a moment.

 

Sue Ryan: One thing about moving, removing the driving privileges, though, is, it doesn’t always have to be instantaneous. It can be gradual, and we’re going to talk about ways that it can be gradual so that we can be supporting them, driving as long as it’s safe for them, for others, for all of us. And we’re gonna talk about ways we can minimize the risk for others on the road and for our care receiver while remove reducing our anxiety. And trust me, Nancy, you you’re going to share on this I had a lot of anxiety with that in the very beginning.

 

Nancy Treaster: Well, I think this is a common one of those really early areas. Everybody has a lot of anxiety around, because it’s hard to know.

 

Sue Ryan: It’s hard to know.

 

Nancy Treaster: We’ve got 4 good tips, but I think we the best thing to do is start with your tip, which is really one and done right. So legal and insurance, if you understand that. And if you’re able to take advantage of the way Sue managed drive reducing or eliminating driving privileges, you will save yourself a lot of heartache. So let’s jump in with what, how you manage through it.

 

Sue Ryan: We’ll get started with what I did one of the things that I had learned, and we’ll put the links to give you some information in the show notes. One of the things I learned is different states have different laws about navigating driving. When you’ve been diagnosed with a type of dementia like California and Pennsylvania. The doctors need to report it within 10 days of having given the diagnosis. Some states someone could report that there’s an unsafe driver, and they’ll be required to take a test. So you wanna make sure that you understand? In the state you’re in, what their legal requirements are.

 

Sue Ryan: One of the things other things that I learned, and our doctor explained this to me, and I went ahead and had him have. The conversation with my husband is about. If your loved one has been diagnosed with a type of dementia and they are in an automobile accident, even if they were sitting in a red light minding their own business, and somebody hit them completely unjustified. If they’ve already been diagnosed with dementia, it won’t turn out well for them people will. Our doctor was sharing different lawsuits, different examples of what happens because the loved one’s been diagnosed with dementia.

 

Sue Ryan: Recognizing that, and that my hubby is a numbers guy, I called and asked the doctor’s office if the doctor would be willing to share with him that information, and have him understand that whatever they could sue us, for they would that they possibly could, they would, if we had any kind of an accident. If my husband his name is Jack, if he was driving, doctor said, yes, I took them to the doctor’s office. Jack went in. They had a conversation. They opened the door. Jack handed me the car keys, and he never asked to drive again.

 

Sue Ryan: On my side, and it was wonderful on my side I had lined up people who would call him to reach out to take him places. I made sure any place he wanted to go. I was right there on the spot proactively. Often. Would you like to go here. Can we go do this? He had meetings he went to in the morning. I made sure I got him there. Other people may have brought him, but so he never felt like he had lost his independence and we worked through it. It worked for us perfectly.

 

Sue Ryan: The third piece of that that is also very helpful is, there are independent drivers, evaluations in some States where people can can give your loved one a driver’s test to to determine if they’re safe to drive the the. There are several benefits of this. First of all, you don’t have to do the driver’s test with the State, because if you failed it at the state level you’re done.

 

Sue Ryan: Secondly, I don’t know if any of you have ever experienced this, but sometimes we don’t take the best advice from our loved one, nor do they take the best advice from us, so our determining whether or not they’re safe to drive may not be the best path. So this independent drivers evaluation is a really helpful step, and there are times when you know it can give us peace of mind because they’ve determined that our loved one is still safe to drive. We can have that test taken multiple times as they progress. And sometimes it’s it’s comforting, actually, for the loved one, if they’re struggling in that, that they can share that with someone else and that person can also help them, because part of their training is to help with those conversations. So those are the the 3 areas that I had is learning what the laws are talking to the doctor, and and it could be someone else. But having them understand our loved one, understand the impact. And then the drivers test.

 

Nancy Treaster: And and and notice in several of those sue leveraged the fact that a third, another person might be the best person to have this conversation with her loved one, so that to me is also a big part of this story at the beginning. But either way, one, and done no need to go on to tip 2, 3, or 4 if you can get get it taken care of this way. Beautiful.

 

Sue Ryan: If. And, Nancy, you did not have that, if you can get it taken care of that way. Experience, you had quite the opposite.

 

Nancy Treaster: Exactly. Now. First, let’s say I didn’t even try any of that. So for our listeners definitely give this a shot. I didn’t even try it. But secondly, I started with the safety concern, but mostly concerned that my husband was gonna get lost. I have to say that was probably as big a concern as I had as anything else. And so the first thing that I did and I found through enough support groups, a lot of people do this is they track their loved one. We wanted them to be able to keep their independence and be able to continue to drive. But we wanna make sure that we can help them if they get lost, or if something happens, and so I tracked my husband through a tracking device in today’s world. You can use and you can do find my phone where you can use an air tag. You can use a tile if you’re an android user. There’s even much more sophisticated phone apps or apps for your phone that you put a tracking device in the car and it tracks not just the GPS of where they are. It also tracks their driving habits like how well they’re doing driving. So things are very sophisticated in terms of your ability to track someone if you don’t feel comfortable tracking them. So one of your friends actually followed their husband.

 

Sue Ryan: Yes, we had a friend who her husband liked to play golf with his buddies, and they had a weekly standing tea time. Several of the other golfers told my friend that her husband was having trouble driving, and he was having trouble filling the car up with gas. One day he was trying to use a Starbucks card to pay for his gas. He wasn’t sure how to turn left into where they were going, and she was concerned about that. So what she started doing was after he would leave. She would follow him at a discrete distance and see how safely he was driving, and then she also actually recorded him, so that when they had the conversation she would have examples where he would know it was him, and he would be able to actually see that.

 

Nancy Treaster: And you know, that’s actually sort of an a nice transition into our third third tip. I could think what number we’re on third tip, which is really actually starting to take over driving. But you start that by or it’s easiest to start that by starting to ride along a lot. So you’re riding along with the ability to to start to understand how they’re driving? Are they? Are they doing a good job? Or they understand the rules of the road. You know what’s going on and you you can ride along for a while and then start to volunteer to drive, and when you start to volunteer to drive you, you might be surprised how often they are up for that. You can use excuses like I need to get gas in my car, or I haven’t driven your car in a while. I’d like to drive it. Can I drive your car?

 

Nancy Treaster: It was pretty quick. I was up to driving 80 90% of the time. And I think that was because my husband, when he was when I was using the tracker, I figured out. He really wasn’t going very far from home. He had it edited himself down to really very closely close, saying, close to home, and I think that’s cause. He didn’t know how to get places, so when I volunteered to drive that opened him up to the opportunity to go places that he didn’t know how to go without having to you know, scare himself so. So he he allowed me to drive to, I think, get him more places, but we never talked about it. It just he started letting me drive so I took over driving slowly and and I’ll tell you a bit of how we get to tip 4. But let me start with my mother-in-law and my mother both use the same strategy they both took over driving.

 

Nancy Treaster: So my mother-in-law just decide decided that she was uncomfortable with my father-in-law driving. So she started saying, I’ll drive, I’ll drive, and she just started driving, and every now and then he would say, well, I can drive. And she’s like, Yeah, but I’m gonna drive. Was it really any argument about it? Eventually she just was the only one driving, and didn’t seem to ever be a big deal. And so in the discussion she was done quickly, with the whole process, just by taking over driving without any too much argument from him. My guess also, probably a little nervous on his part about driving.

 

Nancy Treaster: My dad. On the other hand, my father-in-law has Alzheimer’s. My dad had Parkinson’s for 25 years and my mother started being uncomfortable with his driving. He kept backing into the mailbox when he left the drive, left the driveway so she started volunteering to drive, so she volunteered to drive. She’d drive his car some her car some and after about a year where he hadn’t driven at all. She was driving both cars. It was time for us to buy my youngest son a car and she said, you know. Why don’t you just buy your father’s car? I’m like, oh, that is a great idea. Adam would love that car.

 

Nancy Treaster: She said. Well, let me talk to your father about it. So she sits down to talk to my father, and she says, You know, since you’re not driving anymore would you be okay with us selling your car to Nancy. So for Adam. And he said, I’m not driving anymore. He hadn’t driven enough for a year.

 

Nancy Treaster: Didn’t even realize he hadn’t even.

 

Nancy Treaster: Realize it. Yeah. So both my mother and my mother in law we’re done. We’re done after Tip 3, which would be be hopefully awesome as well for everyone, if you can. If you can get done that easily.

 

Sue Ryan: And and oh, go ahead!

 

Nancy Treaster: So I was going to move on. But if you’ve got something to add, please.

 

Sue Ryan: One of the things I do want to say is you. We’ve talked about relatively painless experiences with ours and one of the things I really do want to honor is the fact. There are some people who are so resistant to giving up the keys, and it becomes a fight, and it’s a constant source of Angst in the support groups. I’ve gone to the number. One thing that has been helpful with this is getting an independent driver. Certification is getting someone else to verify it for them. The number 2 thing is not just having you, but having proactively having buddies, whether it’s a woman or or a a man having their buddies reach out and say, Hey would you go with me? I’d like to do this. So those are 2 different things. But there are people who are very, very resistant.

 

Nancy Treaster: Well. And so we’re gonna go down that path in Tip 4, because my husband would be one of those people, sadly very independent, very young when he got diagnosed with dementia and loved to drive sort of a you know, a big, bad mixture of a lot of things sadly.

 

Nancy Treaster: So tip 4. If you sort of aren’t one of these lucky people who gets done after Tip 3 tip 4 is really where you have to proactively take away the driving privileges. This is not pleasant, but.

 

Sue Ryan: I know. Hey!

 

Nancy Treaster: But when we let well, let me tell you how I got there in in our situation. So at this point, I’m driving 80 90% of the time. So I but this weekend it was a Saturday, and my husband really wanted to drive, so I let him drive, and we aren’t far out of our neighborhood. We get to a light, and our light is green, and it just turns red as it turns red. There’s a pause in the traffic where the other light has not turned green yet to my husband. This was a moment where there was no traffic going, and we’re getting ready to make a left, he pulls right out in the middle of the intersection.

 

Sue Ryan: Action.

 

Nancy Treaster: Horns are honking. I’m screaming a lot, by the way and we get through it and out of it without having an accident which was wonderful. And I’m I’m questioning now. Was that just a one off, or did he not really understand what lights are for? But I screamed a lot, so I’m sure he, you know, convinced he’s now registered what happened. It’ll never happen again.

 

Nancy Treaster: So on Sunday he also insist on driving and we are driving to go home, depot or something 2 times before we even get to our stop. The exact same thing happens at left on red, exact same thing out into the middle of a 4 lane intersection. It was really scary and not pleasant for either one of us so of course, I drove home and I told him, I’m sorry, but you’re not going to be able to drive anymore and he was very mad.

 

Nancy Treaster: So I hide the keys and this don’t forget the spare keys. I found the spare keys, made sure they were all in my purse, made sure my purse was with me, or someplace where he wasn’t going to go looking for it and I waited.

 

Nancy Treaster: So at this point he is. Dementia is enough where he is losing things on a regular basis, and for some thankful reason he did not assume I had the keys, so he just thinks the keys are lost. And so and so that’s another thing. Don’t make a big deal in front of them about taking the keys. Just wait. Get the keys quietly while they’re not paying attention so that you can play the game that they’ve lost the keys.

 

Nancy Treaster: So here we go. We’re waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting. I’m waiting on the battery to die. He’s looking for the keys every day. He’s very upset because he can’t find the keys. I have no idea where the keys are, of course and eventually I try his car, and the battery’s dead good news so amazingly that day I found the keys, and we get it in his car to take his car. But it’s dead. Oh, my terrible problem!

 

Nancy Treaster: So we wait. So I  tell him, I said, the car is dead. We need to call the service. People have it towed. So we have the car towed and now he’s asking me every day what the status is of his car, said, oh it’s really bad, so your car is, it’s just it’s got something seriously wrong with it. We need to just sell it.

 

Nancy Treaster: He at this point he can’t use the phone well enough to call and check himself. He’s really relying on me to give him the information. I wait it. I took a few days to tell him that it was just really bad, and we had to sell the car, so he agreed to sell the car. So we sold the car and for the next 2 months. He asked me continuously to take him to the lot to buy a brand new car, and he was furious. I wouldn’t do it now.

I guess the point is, it went on for 2 months. He was mad for 2 months, furious for 2 months. But the point is, it went on, for 2 months. When you’re in the middle of it, it feels like it’s going to go on forever. They’re never going to stop being mad about this topic. I’m here to tell you,It stops. They do stop asking about it, and they move on to other things, and they get over it or forget about it, I’m not sure which, but it goes away. This, too, shall end

Sue Ryan: And Nancy to to your point. One of the things and we were gonna have a whole episode on this. You told him the truth he needed to hear. Some people have an issue with lying to someone who’s got a type of dimension. We’re gonna talk about that. What she was doing was telling him what would resonate with him in his mind at the time.

And that that helped him to have that understanding of it so that she could, she could have the outcome be where he was not going to be able to drive.  But in her situation that was the truth. He needed to hear. You’ll come up with different variations on that but it’s doing whatever you you can to not have them be driving the car. 

Nancy Treaster: And I think so that’s just an important lesson. Really, throughout all these topics we’re gonna talk about is it’s often you need to tell them the truth, they need to hear and not feel bad about it, because it’s legitimately what they need to reduce their anxiety and to make them feel better about what’s happening. You’re doing them a favor as opposed to feeling guilty about it. You should feel good about it. You’re helping them. 

The one thing I wanna make sure I don’t leave out here is since this entire scenario has happened, I’ve been in enough dementia support groups to realize what most people do that get down to Tip 4 where I was, and they removed the driving privileges. 

They don’t wait 2 weeks for the battery to die.They disconnect the battery cable. Now that’s pretty smart.

Sue Ryan: What are the reason that we’re doing these podcasts.

Nancy Treaster: Yes is. Let’s let’s save you a lot of trouble and help you get through these processes a lot faster. So anyway. So that’s that’s our last tip, tip for.

Sue Ryan: Thank you, Nancy, for that. That was very helpful. Let’s summarize. In this episode. We talk about 4 main tips for planning, preparing and eventually removing the privilege of driving. First, understanding the legal and financial like the insurance considerations in where your location is, the second is tracking. Tracking the vehicle tracking your loved one. The third one is about, for example, riding along and eventually taking over the driving. And finally, it’s removing the driving privileges completely.

Nancy Treaster: one thing we, said, Sue, that we’ll do at the end of each episode is, list any products that might be helpful. The only product in this episode that we reference is a tracking device, and we’ve got some interesting ones that we’ll put in the show notes.