I'm hoping someone can give me some advice and direction. My mom has been exhibiting some symptoms which I think could be consistent with AD. I don't really know much about it, so could be wrong.
She lives more than 2000 miles away, so my information is second hand and based on phone conversations with her. She is 76 years old and has always been a smart and thoughtful person.
Some reasons for my concern:
1) my parents recently visited my brother and his wife and new baby. My brother told me that they departed early because she was having cognitive problems and a few times didn't know who he was.
2) I talked to her on the phone a few weeks ago, and she kept referring to my brother and his wife as Bonnie and Dick, who are in fact my mom's sister and brother in law.
3) I talked to her a couple days ago, and she told me about how she's been entering all these sweepstakes, and thinks she's going to win millions of dollars. One said she was a "guaranteed winner" of a new car, and she was asking for advice on what color to get. She's spent $300-$400 on these sweepstakes entry programs. (scams if you ask me) This is a woman who is fairly wealthy and has managed my parents money for basically all their married lives.
I have talked to my Dad only vaguely about it. I'm really not comfortable talking about it to be honest. He said they've had several big arguments about her wasting money on these scams and she's threatened to leave him.
The advice I'm looking for, is first of all, does this sound like it could be AD? What else could it be? What kind of doctor should she be seen by? A neurologist? Any advice for me, on what to do?, what to say to my mom and/or dad? I'm not particularly close to either of my parents, especially my mom.
I am a veteran of Alzheimer care - my Mom had it for 8 years and I was her only caregiver for 5.
Everything you wrote points exactly to Alzheimer's.
Your Mom is being scammed out of a lot of money on these 'sweepstakes" things - someone must call or write to the senders and get her off their mailing lists. Or, before that takes place, someone has to check the mail every day and throw out all those junk mailings.
Much more importantly, your Mom needs to get a thorough checkup from a neurologist or a geriatric specialist and perhaps start on anti Dementia drugs. They help at the start and are not much use later on.
Someone also needs to have POA over her affairs, someone you can trust and who will do the right thing with her finances. And, someone needs to have a medical directive giving them the right to make decisions on her behalf when she gets too confused to speak for herself.
I suggest you go out to visit your parents at the earliest opportunity. If your dad is healthy and mentally fit, he needs to start taking more control over her life. If not, it falls upon their children. I think considering their financial stutus, both of them could live in a lovely assisted living home and have everything done for them.
Your Dad must know that ''something is going on" but it is amazing how long the one who lives with the AD victim fools themselves ..it is called denial. I did it too. "It's just a lot of 'senior moments'". "It's old age." "It's her eyesight." "She isn't hearing well any more."
It was Dementia.
I wish you luck in your journey along this pain filled road.
welcome to this wonderful place that is fulled with great advice... from your posting I too would be worried. If you can not get out to see your mom is there someone close by, a sister,brother, aunt or whomever that you can call and talk to and maybe discuss your concerns, this is a very serious disease and there are some meds, that may help slow this down if introduced early enough.... please get some help for your mom and dad, this is a painful road you are about to start....
Hello,
I'm sorry your mother is struggling, but I am glad you found this wonderful supportive community, which has been a great help to me and I hope you find some useful information here, too.
A thorough physical check-up is the priority ... something other than dementia might be causing these issues, so you have to rule everything else out first. We have a wonderful geriatric specialist here with a vast background in Alzheimers who takes wonderful care of both my in-laws, including my dear MIL with Alzheimers.
Money management was the first sign of a problem with my MIL. I think we overlooked other things for a bit because she was always very carefree and silly (in a good way) But she was fooled by a phone scam, bills starting going unpaid and she'd say she was shorted at the bank when she'd cash their social security/pension checks. We only had a few months of these clues presenting themselves and her husband confided that she was getting lost when they were driving simple routes in the town they'd lived in for many years (FIL gave up driving in 1991 after he had a stroke so MIL did all their driving) At this point, I got pregnant with our first child and we moved them to the town we live in so we could care for them. A quick diagnosis and getting her on Aricept gave them 6 more good years in their home here with us helping to care for them.
The key is do something ... it's so easy to explain it away and hope it will get better, but you must be proactive, as the other wise ladies here have suggested. There's so much to take care of, but it's better done now than later.
The road of Alzheimers can be long and painful. Your mothers symptoms seem to match up, and the advice of the other women is very excellent. Though your mother's symptoms may seem minor now, and seeing as you are not close to her, you may find it easy not to worry too much (aside from her "sweepstakes problem) but it's important to do as much as you can as soon as you can, and that includes having meaningful conversations with her. Again, I know you say you're not terribly close with your parents, but you would be surpirsed how much it hurts when you try to have even a simple conversation with an alzheimers patient, and you can't because you don't even know what they're talking about.
My grandmother had slowly progressing dementia for years, and my family wasn't too, too terribly concerned because we all got used to her behaviors of forgetfulness and "renaming" of even her own children. This past year she progressed very rapidly into alzheimers especially one she was forced to move out of her apartment, which I can only imagine how hard that was for her, being a very independent woman, living by herself for the majority of her life. Two weeks ago my mother went to visit her in the nursing home, and for the first time my grandmother had no idea who my mother was. Three days later she died.
Though the dementia and alzheimers experience wasn't quite as painful for me (as sadly I didn't see my grandmother nearly as much as I should have), my family suffered a lot.
Don't waste the last coherent years your mother has to speak to her. You may very much regret it in the end. Also, make sure your father is educated on the disease. Love and support is very helpful, really when it comes to any disease.
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