My mother once went out to the backyard in mid-January wearing a t-shirt over a nightie without any footwear. When we asked her why she was out there she replied “that’s where they are.” Who are, Ma? We couldn’t get an actual response from her.
It also took us awhile to convince her to come in rather than catch her death of cold.
That was the moment I realized our roles had flipped. I’ve never given birth but I was totally unprepared to care for a 70-something toddler.
We have “They” here too. After all, “They” were the ones who put the OJ in the ice cube tray and hid it on the counter. For the longest time there were legions of invisible people who were in and out of the house. Of course now there are a whole cadre of VNA’s and such in and out all week long, most of which are waking her up to DO things.
I don’t know if she is deaf as a rock, or has selective hearing. She goes from hearing a feather float by to not hearing a fire truck siren outside.
The big fun will be in two weeks when she goes to see the endocrinologist about the thyroid. How does one deal with a glow-in-the-dark mother? At least the half life is only 8 days…
My dad has Parkinson’s and is in the early stages of dementia. He also has selective hearing loss. You can be speaking directly to him, enunciating every word and he’ll be saying “what? what?”. Then I’ll be talking with someone two rooms away and he’ll pipe up down the hall with “that’s not what happened” or “yeah I saw that, too”.
Yep - selective hearing. My example of oldus parenti (no, I don’t speak Latin, why do you ask?) has that as well. She is also attracted to bright shiny objects. She takes them and puts them in her stuff. If your cell phone is missing, she has it. May I ask about crayons? Mine likes to color in books with crayons. Og knows where she gets the crayons, but it happens.
My mother is 87 and started developing dementia about 4 years ago. At this point, she can remember things for maybe five minutes at a time. She still remembers her children, but doesn’t recognize her grandchildren.
She went through a really bad patch a couple of years ago where she started to hallucinate and sometimes got really nasty. (She tried to hit my sister with her cane at one point.) She started to think she was hearing babies crying. Then she started to think that someone must be trying to harm the babies. Then, because we wouldn’t help her find the babies, she started to think we must be in on it.
One day while I was Mom-sitting she got away from me when my back was turned. She managed to get out on the front porch, where she started yelling at passersby, “Help! They’re killing the babies! Call the police! Help! Help!” I waved sheepishly at them, saying “Hi! My mother has dementia! I’m not actually killing babies!”
Fortunately the couple who lives next door came over and were able to calm her down and get her back in the house. But that night she spent two hours, starting at 2 AM, shouting out the window for the police to come and save the babies. Fortunately it was from a second floor window and back from the street and nobody heard (or at least nobody called the police). I was most afraid that if the police actually came they would take her away.
Eventually we were able to get her some better medication and she has improved a lot. She still asks “Do you know where my babies are?” but if you tell her “I don’t know” she drops the subject. And she isn’t hostile any more and mostly sleeps through the night.
After my FIL died my MIL asked for him continually. If we told her “Mom he died in Sept.” She would go through a short
grief with tears and wailing. We finally just started saying “He’ll be back soon” and she would be fine with that.
One day she had asked me where Pop was, and I said “He’ll be home soon”. She patted my knee and “Oh, honey don’t you remember he died in Sept.” I was floored.
One thing we often noticed with my mom was that she could be living in her own world and then every so often she would have the most lucid, down to earth conversations with us like there wasn’t a thing wrong.
One of my conversations with my mother:
Mom: Where’s Dad? (meaning my father)
Me: He’s not here. He died 23 years ago.
Mom: Oh. Where’s Granma? (my father’s mother, who used to live with us)
Me: She died 22 years ago.
Mom: Where’s Aunt Irene?
Me: She died 25 years ago.
Mom: Where’s my sister?
Me: She died 18 years ago.
Mom: Oh! You’re always so negative!
One of the problems with my mother’s memory loss is that she asks a continual stream of questions and can’t remember the answers, so she asks the same ones every five minutes.
What day is it?
What time is it?
What year is it? (Although we have a digital clock/calendar in front of her to try to forestall these questions she never looks at it.)
How old am I?
How old are you?
What’s for dinner?
Rinse, repeat, all day long. It takes a lot of self control not to say “But you just asked that!” and just give her the answer. But sometimes I change it up. When she asks “How old am I?” I say “127,” and she laughs.
Near the end of my mother’s life she developed a fixation on ice. The refrigerator had an ice maker, and she would go to it over and over, leaving glasses full of ice all over the kitchen. She’d do this until all the ice was gone, and continue trying to draw ice even when nothing was coming out. No amount of explaining, arguing or cajoling got her to stop. My dad eventually disconnected the water supply to the fridge, which partially solved the problem.
I echo everything here, having been through ALZ with my dad. It was very hard on my mom and me, obviously. He was not violent but he did need constant monitoring and we lost a lot of sleep. Eventually there was a physical breakdown that led to hospital stays, and he was in a good NH/rehab facility for a while. (Good ones do exist, actually.) Then he had a bad allergic reaction to an antibiotic and died the next morning.
Few things are as stressful and isolating and frustrating and exhausting as being a caregiver. With babies and kids, they grow out of things, but adults and seniors are another story. It gets progressively worse.
My very last conversation with my mother was exactly this. We talked about everything under the sun. It was like her way of saying goodbye to me as she’d always known me. She stopped talking and slipped further maybe a week or two afterward.
Maybe the selective hearing thing is not that bad–some neighbor let his/her ankle biter out two hours ago, and it has been alerting the neighborhood, nay the whole county, about the invisible mole people since.
I’m surrounded by the greatest generation, who all smuggled arms home from various wars and ‘police actions’. Why is that dammed dog still alive??
My Mom died at 72 and my Dad at 85, both probably from tobacco (lung cancer and COPD respectively). It sucks that they are gone but they kept their faculties until the end. This thread renews how glad I am to have dodged that bullet.
This is what our entire weekend was like. My father in law had to leave town for a family funeral, so we had mother in law for the weekend. Constant stream of questions: where was her husband, why did he leave, how long has he been gone, when was he coming back, where am I, where do I live, how long have I been living there… My wife finally made a “FAQ” cheat sheet for her, but that just prompted more questions.
On top of that, we had to watch one grandkid on Saturday and two on Sunday. And you know… the whole thing wouldn’t have been so bad except that MIL never. shuts. up. Ever. She couldn’t stay quiet for two minutes if her life depended on it. So just constant nonstop questions all weekend long until my wife took her home Sunday night.
My father in law is a freakin’ saint. I don’t know how he does it every day.
I always kept in mind, how horrible it must be to have no recall or idea who/what/ where you are. Most sufferers finally go quiet as less of their brain works. It’s a left-handed blessing when it progresses to that point. You’re happy they’re not worried all the time, but you mourn the loss of memories shared. What a terrible disease this is. I wish some breakthrough would happen.
Latest update: She fought the floor, and the floor won.
We went to the endocrinologist yesterday, and shortly after the appointment started, she fell forward out of the chair, and clunked her head on the floor. Blood ensued, along with a very rattled endocrinologist. After meeting half the next town over’s fire department, it was off to the ER for a glue job and a few litres of liquid. They decided to keep her, so I’ll find out what is going on today. I’m not particularly confident in the endocrinologist, English was language #5, and it sounded like she was going to be slow to get a treatment protocol going. I pointed out that Mom now weighed 90 pounds, in shirt, sweatshirt, hoodie, jacket, sweatpants and shoes. at loosing 4 pounds a week, at the rate the quack was thinking, things might get rolling about the time she achieved negative weight.
On the other hand, I didn’t have her thudding around at three AM, so there was that…
It’s pretty common for doctors not to take the problems of elderly patients seriously. I went through something similar with my dad three years ago, when I had to push his primary care physician to pay attention to a blood test that showed my dad’s kidneys had shut down.
Losing four pounds a week would be serious for a big, healthy person. For a frail, elderly person it’s immediately dangerous. You already know your mom has an overactive thyroid, so all the doctor has to do is verify the condition and prescribe treatment. Time to find a new endocrinologist. I hope you can do so quickly.
Is your mom already on an antithyroid medication?
BTW, is it possible that some of your mom’s behavioral problems are due to her overactive thyroid?
QFT.
We had to find a Senior Medical Specialist to get my Grandfather’s meds adjusted. We thought he was showing signs of dementia and it turned out to be inappropriate medication interactions and inappropriate dosages for a senior citizen (2 separate problems). Some doctors just are not educated about how to deal with the elderly.
Good luck. Can someone at the hospital take action on the thyroid issue? They often have specialists on call. Maybe they would be willing to prescribe a course of action (she says hopefully).
Evening update: Still in the hospital, she was out cold when I was there, and they have her hands wrapped up, since she apparently loves to pick at her thousand scabs, with the bed looking like the scene of bloodletting. Paper thin skin that makes wet TP look like Kevlar is not a good thing. The wrapped hands should preclude any more IV high jinks.
The hospital she is in kind of grew over the years–corridors don’t meet at 90 degrees, you can walk 45 feet and go from the ground floor to the second floor without a altitude change. The buildings are in one small city block, but it’s a half mile from the parking lot to her room. I’m not sure if the buildings grew from osmosis or parthenogenesis. I’m leaning on the cane heavily by the time I get to her room. I think her wing of the building dates from the invention of the wheel. I have a strong urge to leave a trail of breadcrumbs.
Poor old gal. You’re a good son.