Mum, with her daily delusions, speaks of going to her "other house down the road," which has the exact same address and furniture. As well there are two of me! (I wish!) This can be helpful when she complains about me to me...
Anyone else navigating something similar?
It is comforting to know that others have similar experiences.
If she starts getting agitated about it that's when you have to orientate her back to reality. It's a type of dementia loop similar to repeating. Ignoring and paying the subject of the loop no attention helps to get them out of the fixation for a while at least.
Most of the time I would just speak plainly and explain in simple terms that I'm the person they're complaining about and saying terrible things about. There is no double of me somewhere else.
If they were persistent in the delusional nonsense it doesn't work to keep trying to explain over and over again. Sometimes I would just tell them that nobody wants to hear their nonsense and that I'm there to help them and nobody else is helping them. This usually shuts down the delusion. Often times you just have to ignore them if it's safe to. When a client would start up that thread again about the "other" the "nice one" or the "mean one" I would tell them calmly that I'm not discussing that nonsense with them and then say no more.
This kind of behavior is a kind of dementia loop similar to repeating something over and over again. They get fixated on the subject and don't let it go. You have to break the loop. Sometimes distraction with food or an activity works. Sometimes it doesn't. Ignoring and refusing to give any attention to the subject of the loop really works.
To the day she passed, she swore that man was not her husband, although he was very nice.
She was very miffed that her (real) husband didn’t visit her once in the four years she lived at the SNF.
He went on to say it was furnished exactly the same.
Later my husband took his dad for a ride and asked him to take him by his other house. It fell apart at that point. His dad became confused and they went for ice cream.
Several months later he was at our home as he had been evacuated due to a hurricane and he told me he really liked our house and he liked that it was exactly like our other house. It made it easy to get around, he went on, because we had everything in the same place.
Later, when a grandchild left to go get needed medication, he came to me and said, “I know grandchild went to get my things. That’s good, he said. I just wanted to ask..which house is she going to get it from. House A or house B?” “House A” I said.
“Oh, that’s good,” he said.
He did not have Parkinson’s. He had recovered from a fall five years earlier. We felt it was dementia related to brain injury from that fall. He was not confused about people. He wasn’t angry or upset about the two houses. He seemed to think it unusual himself but he was very serious when he brought it up. We didn’t try to convince him he was wrong.
Although my dad was her ONE AND ONLY husband, she swore years later that she’d been married twice.
Now she knows me. But, she thinks all of the nurses in her TCU are "Courtney," my sister.