For the past few years my wife has been saying her mother is showing some signs of dementia. I have not given it much heed. Based on their relationship, and based on my experiences with her mother, I thought this was just something that my wife was imagining. Yes, there were issues and I thought some of them could be tied into the stroke her mom suffered, but I did not believe she had dementia.
Yesterday my wife gave her mother a call and her mom told her she was talking to her granddaughter (my niece, who lives about 250 miles away). While my niece and her parents (my wife’s brother and his wife) are scheduled to come up here this weekend, we were not aware of any plans for them to come in earlier. My wife asked to speak to her brother or her sister-in-law. Her mom told her that it was just her granddaughter that was there, that her parent’s dropped her off. My wife then asked to speak with her niece and was told to hold on.
At this point, my wife was thinking maybe she really was visiting, if her mom told her to hand on. Still it was her mom who got back on the phone saying the granddaughter did not feel like talking on the phone. My wife called the facility where her mom was staying and asked if anyone had come in to visit her that morning. She was told “No”. The person at the rehab center with which my wife spoke, however, told her that her mom was carrying on a conversation the night before with her parents, who were under the bed. My mother-in-law’s parents have been dead for 40 years.
I am hoping that maybe the facility gave my mother-in-law some kind of medication to which she had a reaction. There are certain medicines that do make my mother-in-law hallucinate. Still, at this point, I do not think the warning signs can be ignored. I think there have to be some test run to find out exactly what we are dealing with.
Unfortunately what my hopes are do not match what I now believe to be the reality of the situation.
1 comment:
I'm so sorry. My father (now deceased) and I were always close but just a few years before I recognized the Alzheimer's we had a terrific blowup in which he angrily accused me of not telling him something and excluding him from a family affair (totally false). Even with a family history of Alzheimer's, it was denial, denial, denial. But that being said, I've seen some pretty convincing temporary dementia symptoms in both my mom and mother-in-law due to toxic med mixes and pain med overdoses. I would definitely get an immediate assessment of her meds and even ask for a neurological assessment with a board certified neurologist--even if you had to call Dial-A-Ride to get her there. Good Luck.
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