Progress of hallucination. Perhaps Lewy body.
My mother is 95 . She lives in assisted living. She has always prided herself on her mental abilities . She had a stroke four years ago which is why she ended up in AL. She has always been extremely stubborn and never wrong. Everything has always been the fault of others. She recovered pretty well from her stroke , but uses a walker, and is on several Bp meds. About a year ago she had a small stroke behind her eye. She lost vision in that eye. Her hearing is also gotten pretty bad. She refuses to wear eyeglasses or hearing aids . About a year ago she started complaining about the lady in the room next door playing loud chanting music at night. There was none but she was fuming about it and thought the staff was lying to her. Then about 6 months ago she started to tell us that someone was roaring his engine at night outside her window and in the last two months she is seeing him as well. The car is in the middle of the lawn outside her window, he is watering the planter 24 hours a day , and sprays water into her room on the third floor. Now her floor is wet along with her furnishings. He frequently sprays her with gasoline or antifreeze in her eyes. She feels water and smell chemicals, and her skin is burning. Everyone on staff is plotting against her to make her think she is crazy so she’ll have to go to the dementia care building, which costs more money ( in her mind it’s a plot to get money from her) . Now she believes my husband is in on it because she heard him talking to the guy that’s stalking her. I feel bad for her because she is terrorized. The most tricky thing is that she is cognitively fine. I think anyway due to her hearing loss she sometimes misunderstands. She also is not sleeping, doesn’t mingle with other patients because they “have issues “or “think they are better than me” , and only goes down once a day to eat. we can get her into see a neurologist until December 16 . I haven’t told her about the appointment because I know she’ll refuse to go . My sister discussed her with her own neurologist ( different location far way ) and she said if I had to guess I’d say Lewy body dementia) . So no actual diagnosis yet, but at what point will she begin to loose her cognitive abilities? How will this progress ? What can we do from now until mid December? pS- she is tested constantly for UTIs . Any thing anyone can add is helpful.
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Good luck.
You are unlikely to get a definitive diagnosis, but she may end like my brother with "Probable Lewy's Dementia".
The hallucinations of Lewy's is VERY real. The situations described are like dreams but differ in that they occur when awake and they are well remembered and in DETAIL. For instance my brother might hallucinate that there is an immigrant woman in brown monk-like robes huddled in his corner hiding with her tiny baby. When he reaches out to touch her she is not there. Another hallucination I well remember is his telling me a long detailed description of he pool party outside his bedroom window. One man looked like, had hair like Elvis Presley and white shorts with a white towel folded over his shoulders. He would go on to describe many attendees of this party, and would tell me this was a dream, but he was awake, on his way back from the bathroom after getting up to pee.
There were other symptoms such as very very poor balance, occ. inability to swallow well with attendant choking, loss of smell and taste for some years prior to noticeable symptoms.
I would discuss with a good Neuro-psych MD.