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@ocdogmom
I did not know that the picking is a dementia symptom, but that explains my husband's obsession with picking at things on him...not just his dry skin but also any little pills on his clothes (or mine), lint, you name it. Drives me crazy when he starts picking at the pills on his socks that nobody is going to see anyway. Wow! He doesn't like to shave and it's hard to shave him, so I let him grow a short beard, but then he started pulling the hair of it out. He looked pretty moth-eaten, so he had to be shaved. Now, we're back to not shaving and starting over with the beard—until he pulls enough of it out that it will be shaving time again.
Dementia certainly has some strange symptoms that aren't the obvious ones that everyone knows. We had a dog who died several years back. She had canine cognitive dysfunction, which is a doggy form of dementia. Among others, she had one of the symptoms I'd seen listed online and that was that she would always go to the hinge side of doors when going in or out. I wonder if anyone has been able to explain why a dog's brain would change to the point that they go to the hinge side of doors. Or why a person's brain would cause them to pick at things. It's truly a mysterious organ.
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@bclane My husband does not shower on his own nor brush his teeth with out prompting but he does brush his own hair and "trim" his beard with a small electric razor. I have to shut my mouth when I see what he has done to his beard as it is almost always uneven or missing in some spots. I have chosen to celebrate the fact that he can and will still do some personal grooming. He is still able to get to the bathroom on his own but always uses a ton of toilet paper and never flushes the toilet. This caused a major drain backup during the last game of the world series last year making me call the emergency ($$$$$$) plumber when I would have rather been watching the Dodgers come from behind and win. But, big picture, I am grateful that he still wipes his own butt. Sometimes he needs help to get it all but not usually. I don't know the reason dementia patients pick at things. For me it is enough to know that it is because of the disease and maybe he is just bored, who knows.