“Media items” are any sort of file (pictures, documents, etc.). The settings on the board don’t allow you (or any of us) to upload files as part of a post. You can include images, etc., in your post, but to do so, you have to place a link to an image on a website, and the board software is a little bit fussy as to how you format it (i.e., it has to be on its own line in your post).
Thank you Kenobi. I know I must have done something wrong, however, I did not include any of the items you mentioned.
What I DID do, that might have caused the problem, was copy ThelmaLou’s questions, pasted them into my response, bolded them and responded in a new paragraph. It must be very obvious that I read most days and post almost never. thank you for your response.
The easiest way to do that on this board is to highlight/select what you want to quote in the other person’s post; there should be a pop-up menu that shows up just above your highlighted text, including “Quote.” Click on that, and Discourse will open up a “new post composition” window, with the other person’s text already in a quote box. I did exactly this to quote your previous post in this post.
And, you are welcome!
Thanks again, I am proud to say I did just that on my 3rd (and successful) attempt. Thank you so much!..
Well damn! That’s disturbing!
This, however, is very gratifying. 
Oh dear. You mean they didn’t admit they were having hallucinations?
I did email my friend last night and suggest she go to see her PCP as soon as possible. And take her brother with her so he can listen and take notes. I’m assuming she’s going to use the hallucinations as the primary reason for her visit. I did say it could be a symptom of Parkinson’s. I didn’t want to freak her out too much. If it were me, I’d be googling my symptoms like crazy.
I decided to email because I was thinking she might not remember all the details of a phone conversation. This way she can reread the email.
I’m considering calling her sister who lives in NYC (we live in Texas but quite far from each other-- 6+ hour drive) and talking to her. My friend said she has told her sister about the hallucinations. I also know the sister from high school. I’m not sure this is a good idea.
Thanks so much for sharing your story. I will add to the saga as things develop over here.
My condolences on the death of your husband. And your sister, too. My husband died 25 years ago this month.
No, they did not until they were asked. I was able to coach my husband by asking him, in the exam room, to tell the doctor about the people coming in the ceiling.
My sister did not say anything, and her son did not want to incur her wrath by bringing it up. It was a wasted visit. We then prepared the doctor prior to each visit.
There is always the possibility that the hallucinations are caused by something other than LBD.
Thank you for your condolences. Sorry for the loss of your husband.
I’m looking forward to reading about the journey of your friend. Certainly not as entertainment. I would not wish this on anyone, patient nor family/caretakers.
I see a long, difficult road ahead…
Thanks again so much for sharing your story.
Sending good wishes to you, your friend and her family for a positive outcome.
I could write a book about my mother. I don’t have that kind of time today, but will say mom lived alone and set the dining room table every day because ‘they’ were coming for dinner. Who ‘they’ were, she couldn’t say but this resulted in the knobs taken off of the stove… She had various people ‘sleeping in the back room’ - her parents (!), her mother in law, and at one point the Kardashians (!). She ‘saw’ her younger son walk through her fireplace to ‘get to his office’. And she had been obsessed with her ‘poor sick baby’ son for years (who was now in a group home) and was convinced he was still living in her basement. She wrote dozens of notes telling him to take out the trash, what to wear, what did he want to eat later…left him sandwiches with notes saying ‘one is for you and one is for your father’ (who had been dead for years)…Oh, and I got cheerful phone calls at 2, 3, 4 a.m. asking what I was going to do today, Couldn’t tell day from night. She was still driving for a while and that had to end when she kept driving to her church nearby and couldn’t understand why it was closed and dark. Oh, I could write a book. Lewy Body Dementia, and she ended up in a nursing home. It was awful, but I never knew what to expect when the phone rang…
Oh my goodness… What a challenge. 
So accept for the hallucinations, she was able to function by herself and live alone for a while? How long?
Well, my friend called me this morning. Let’s call her Mary Lou. It was a disturbing phone call. She did send me a picture of the little pond in her backyard. It’s really a 10-ish foot square frame of small landscaping timbers. With some junk in it. Some old boards, a big plastic tub, a little decorative metal rooster. In the very middle there is a depression with black plastic in it that has some lily pads.
So she’s sitting on her computer looking at the picture, and I’m sitting on my computer looking at the picture, and she is telling me about the faces and the figures in the picture, people and animals. And I tell her there are no people in this picture, and no animals except this little metal decorative rooster. I said, “You are having hallucinations. You are seeing things that aren’t there.” She didn’t really react to this.
And we went around and around on this subject for about 20 minutes, with her still trying to convince me and convince herself that there are people there. And the way she was talking all around it, from every direction, it reminds you of a teenager who’s trying to explain how he didn’t do a thing that he clearly did and the evidence is right in front of you. In this case she’s trying to explain to me that she’s seeing a thing that’s right in front of her, that isn’t really there.
I did tell her that she absolutely must call her doctor on Monday, make sure her brother goes with her, and be sure she tells the doctor about the people that she is seeing that aren’t there. I don’t know if she will follow through.
Sigh. I’m probably going to do a lot of rambling and blathering in this thread as time goes by. 
This may become the record-setting most depressing thread about a not-famous individual for all of 2025.
I wish “MaryLou” the best possible future. But that’s sure not the way to bet.
Oh Lord, yeah, it could be. Sorry but you all are my friends and my audience and I don’t have too many people IRL to talk to about this. Anybody who wants to put this thread on mute, I will understand.
I talked to another friend of mine whose husband had Parkinson’s for over 20 years and died in December 2024, and during the last year of his life he had tons of these hallucinations. Finally, he figured out they weren’t really there, and would say to her, “I’m seeing imaginary people again, aren’t I?”
But no…why would anyone mute your thread? I read what you write with great interest, and I’m also interested in how your friend will fare in the future. We are all human beings; we grow old and sick, and no one is spared that. I have great sympathy for others who have to cope with such difficult situations. I hope for your friend that her situation is perhaps not as bad as you suspect.
Talk away. This is one of the things this board is for.
– is there any way you can call the doctor yourself? They can’t tell you anything without written permission; but maybe you can tell them about that conversation.
She hasn’t been to the doctor yet. I’m hoping she will call and make an appointment on Monday. As to how soon she can get in, I don’t know. One of the symptoms of this condition is having a hard time making decisions, and she has been afflicted that way for a long, long time. This is going to be a slow process.
I’m debating if and when to call her sister who lives in New York City. I know her from high school, too. She’s a couple of years younger than us. Mary Lou said she has talked to her sister about this, but given her difficulty in expressing herself clearly these days, the magnitude of the situation may not be apparent to the New York sister, whom I will call Fanny.
One step at a time.
Sometimes, although I am interested, I really don’t want to read about other people’s suffering.
I think I would call the sister, for what that’s worth. I was unhappy when I was one of the last to find out about my sister’s difficulties; and you’re right that they may not have come over clearly in the other conversations.
ETA: I don’t know the sister or the relationship, of course. Take with however much salt you find useful.
Mary Lou and Fanny are very close even though they live far apart.
Oh, she lived alone in her house for 3-4 years. (we had been to an elder law attorney years before and had all the legal stuff done.). I was the only one in the area to look after her, and I had my own family to take care of 20 miles away. So I hired caregivers from an agency for a few hours a day and went over there on Fridays to sort out her pills, clean out the refrigerator, etc. She got worse as time went on and I began getting calls from the helpers to come over for some minor or major crisis. I dreaded hearing the phone ring!
It was a nightmare. I had to get her on Medicaid, take over her finances and try to keep up with the scammers calling several times a day and sending her sob story letters every day. I smuggled out a stack of mail a foot high every week - begging letters from you name it…save the ocean, save the children, save the horses, save the cats, the dogs, the pigs, the veterans… she was able to write checks for a while. One of them got $500 in Visa gift cards from her for some scheme. They came to the door telling her she had to pay them for something important. I was all alone in this, knew nothing about what to do, who to call, how to proceed. I did get her phone number and bank account changed.
When she began falling on her face and didn’t know where she was living, I got an in-home evaluation (by nurses sent from the office for the aging) done and she was cleared to go into a nursing home. So off she went, and she lived there fairly content for another couple of years, very amiable and happy to see me when I visited. Never angry, never asked to ‘go home’, the staff said she was a sweetheart.
Oh, what a relief it was! My nerves were shot and my hair was falling out in handfuls by that time!
Yikes.
I am so sorry you and she had to go through this.