i dont know if my mam has dementia

[oldsoulchild]

my mam has been gradually becoming more and more confused, on a recent holiday she left the room and wandered round in the night, one night she was only wearing her underskirt!
a few months ago she was going for a check up at the doctors so i rang him to let him know my concerns, he barely listened to me and it seems did nothing about my concerns.
i had to get a doctor round to her yesterday and he said she was confused because she has a chest infection, i think its more than that or am i worrying unnecessarily? i dont know what to do, do i wait till the infection has gone and see if she improves, or do i push the doctors now? i dont live with her so i have no idea of what she does at night, but even the smallest task takes a lifetime for her to achieve, she forgets what shes doing while shes doing it, shes constantly looking for things, because she forgets what shes looking for, life is one big search!
need advice please

 

[Zadok]

Confusion

Hello and welcome. I found this site very useful. My mum was confused and it took a while to establish what it was: Vascular dementia or Alzheimer's. Whatever its called it seems to have some of the same effects so names don't really help much. But I agree with you.........it needs investiagting. Infections can produce similar effects but it sounds to me as if you think there is more than that.
Try an appointment with another doctor in your surgery (if there is one). Write a letter first so you don't have to sit there ' running down' your mum in front of her. I always felt a bit of a traitor! I used to give a note in to our surgery a few days before asking them to pass it to the dr in good time. It depends how your mum is. I used to offer to sit in with her. Some appointments I described to her as 'a check up', perhaps to check she is back to normal after the chest infection!
Good luck,
Best wishes, Zadok

 

[Mameeskye]

Hi

And welcome.

Your problems sound so similar to ours when we tried to get Mum diagnosed. It took us almost a year before the GP listened and accepted it was more than just forgetfulness or illness.

In the end we wrote all of our concerns to the GP, giving illustrations of her confusion. Although the GP had decided a few days before that Mum was OK in an appointment with her, she did after that letter refer her to the psycho-geriatrician. But it took determined effort as Mum could appear OK for the ten minutes of a GPs appointment. Also Mum would not let us go with ehr, as she knew at that stage that something was wrong but was too scared to admit it.

Good Luck

(((((hugs)))))

Mameeskye

 

[Roma]

Hi

I also think you want to check that she hasn't got a urinary tract infection as they can cause an awful lot of confusion in the elderly.

Roma

 

[desperado]

Hello and welcome
I'm new to this as well. Over the past 5 years I have been sending letters to mum's GP and Dad's GP as my mother was getting more and more forgetful and confused and gave my father hell on earth. Unfortunately he died in December so i moved in with mum to ensure she was OK as she's never lived on ehr own and gets very frightened. Since Dad died the Dr suddenly went into action and referred mum to a psychiatrist for a memory test. It has now been confirmed that she had a misture of Vascular and Alzheimers. As she has a heart condition they won't put her on any medication so we are just going to have to cope with the constant battles of losing things (because i've supposedly stolen them or hidden them to make her think she's going mad) and from what i've read things will get steadily worse. From your description it sounds to me like she has some form of dementia (just because my mother sounds the same) so just send a deluge of letters to your mum's surgery and have a chat with your own GP to see if they can work something out between them.

Good Luck - you can always let rip on here to some very understanding listeners !!!

 

[oldsoulchild]

im so glad i found this site... i think i'll be here quite often from now on, thanks for the replies, very helpful and nice to know there are people who understand whats going on