Good afternoon, I'm a new member & my mom has Sun Downing Dementia which we do not quite understand it and as time progresses it's getting harder & harder to understand. I'm hoping to get some help from joining this support group & take information to my siblings that are also very confused about all this.
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- Thread starter vterrazas
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Hello @vterrazas and welcome to the forum
Sundowning is a symptom of dementia - it is a period of increased confusion and/or anxiety which occurs every day at about the same time, usually late afternoon or early evening (hence its name). It is common during this period for them to be unsure about where they are, or who people are, to get hallucinations, or to become quite frightened/angry
The Alzheimers Society has a factsheet about sundowning, which I tried to find, but since they have reorganised the site I cant find it. Im hoping someone will come on who can give you a link
xx
Sundowning is a symptom of dementia - it is a period of increased confusion and/or anxiety which occurs every day at about the same time, usually late afternoon or early evening (hence its name). It is common during this period for them to be unsure about where they are, or who people are, to get hallucinations, or to become quite frightened/angry
The Alzheimers Society has a factsheet about sundowning, which I tried to find, but since they have reorganised the site I cant find it. Im hoping someone will come on who can give you a link
xx
Thank you for the information & really appreciate you trying to get me the link. What's getting harder for us i trying to understand that at times my mom says some things that it's hard for us to differentiate if it's part of her dementia or not. For example, my dad had to be picked up by the ambulance at their apartment like 2 weeks ago and she didn't show no signs of being worried cause my dad was sick and being taken to the hospital. Later we found out that she made a comment to my cousin saying that nothing was wrong with my dad that he was just wanting attention. This is 1 of many nasty comments that she makes in regards to my dad and we also have heard from other family members how she sometimes says bad comments about us (her children). We do not understand the anger that she has against my dad and if all the nasty comments that she says and makes to my dad & about us is part of her dementia or not.
Hello again
Im afraid that the nasty comments are definitely part of dementia.
People with dementia lose empathy and are then not worried about things that happen to other people. They often think they are being lazy or selfish even when they are working really hard. Its also very common for them to not understand when someone is sick. They also often do not understand that they have something wrong with themselves - in their own mind they have not changed at all, so they think that things that go wrong are due to other people around them
We have all had to deal with it and it is very upsetting. You just have to try (hard as it is) to let it flow off you and not take it personally
Im afraid that the nasty comments are definitely part of dementia.
People with dementia lose empathy and are then not worried about things that happen to other people. They often think they are being lazy or selfish even when they are working really hard. Its also very common for them to not understand when someone is sick. They also often do not understand that they have something wrong with themselves - in their own mind they have not changed at all, so they think that things that go wrong are due to other people around them
We have all had to deal with it and it is very upsetting. You just have to try (hard as it is) to let it flow off you and not take it personally
Really appreciate the information you gave me & will pass it on to my siblings because they are on the same confusing state that I am with what's going on with my mom. I don't think my mom's dementia is that advanced yet cause she still recognizes all of us, knows who is her daughters, grandkids & great-grandkids. My mom likes her independence and doesn't want to go leave with any of her children but things are not good between my dad & her. She doesn't like anything & I mean literally anything that my dad does around their apartment so they are fighting day & night out which to us this is putting a big toll on both of them which both suffer from a heart condition among other medical conditions. My dad in the past couple of months has had 2 hospitalizations which we say it's part of the stress that he has endured due to dealing with my mom's condition. On this past hospitalization my dad let us know that he didn't want to go back to the apartment with my mom cause he couldn't handle her anymore & that whether he said something to her or not that she was still not happy with anything that he does around the apartment. We do understand where he's coming from and him dealing with his memory that is also failing & having to deal with my mom's dementia and neither of them being able to understand each other is suffering from & how to help each other just makes it harder on both of them. So when my dad was discharged from the hospital my sister took him her house & we went to my mom's to let her know how know that my dad was not coming back to the apartment. She took the news better than what we expected but now I wonder if someone with dementia can stay alone during the night cause from 8-2:30 p.m. she has a provider that goes to her house to help her just at night is what worries us.
I think probably it was a good idea to take your dad out of that situation. Stress can kill people.
I think you will just have to see how your mum gets on without care during the night - at least she does have someone in every day
I think you will just have to see how your mum gets on without care during the night - at least she does have someone in every day
My mum recognised my right up until the end. Even when she was in very advanced stages she still knew who I was and recognised my children too. People with dementia dont always forget their family. Its difficult to gauge exactly what stage of dementia people are in, but from what you have said your mum sounds very similar to my mum when she was in mid stage
Good evening, I have a question that is confusing my siblings & me. Can a dementia patient be able to switch things around so that she comes out the victim of a situation? For example, my sister had a party where my mom attended and my dad was also there which at that party it was the 1st time they had seen each other since my dad got out of the hospital & went to live with 1 of my sisters. We found out that when my mom got to the party my dad tried pushing her wheelchair to 1 of the tables & she told him not to touch her & not to be near her. My other sister & me didn't attend that party so when we saw my mom later in the week she told us totally opposite of what had happened between her & my dad making it seem that my dad was the one that didn't want to talk her that he was the one that was indifferent with her. This event hasn't been the only time that she has done this where she comes out being the victim and later we find out that what she told us what not really what had happened. That's why we get so confused & wonder at what extend is her dementia & what is just her making up stories so that she comes out being the one that is the one that was mistreated.
I think that the "made up stories" are probable actually false memories called confabulations, which are very much a feature of mid-stage dementia.
What happens is that the subconscious brain is trying to make sense of the fragments of memory left, so it takes these fragments, adds a load of other things (old memories, dreams, stuff seen on TV, conversations heard, etc etc) and spins it all into a false memory to fill the gaps in the real memory. Memory of emotions are remembered for longer than the events so the confabulations are often dictated by emotions felt at the time of the forgotten event
My mum thought that I was shouting and hitting her, although in reality it was the other way around. She was living on her own at the time and was frightened because she could not understand what was happening and didn't realise that the problem was her. She remembered the emotion and had fragments of memory of shouting and hitting, so a confabulation of me doing it to her was the way that her subconscious made sense of it.
People who are getting confabulations do not realise that the memories are false. They have no control over them and they seem like the real thing so it is difficult to manage it. If you try and tell them that they are wrong it usually makes them angry because they know that they are right because they remember it......
The usual advice is to just go along with it, but sometimes you just can't. I found I said things like "I'm sorry you feel that way", or even just "mmm....."
What happens is that the subconscious brain is trying to make sense of the fragments of memory left, so it takes these fragments, adds a load of other things (old memories, dreams, stuff seen on TV, conversations heard, etc etc) and spins it all into a false memory to fill the gaps in the real memory. Memory of emotions are remembered for longer than the events so the confabulations are often dictated by emotions felt at the time of the forgotten event
My mum thought that I was shouting and hitting her, although in reality it was the other way around. She was living on her own at the time and was frightened because she could not understand what was happening and didn't realise that the problem was her. She remembered the emotion and had fragments of memory of shouting and hitting, so a confabulation of me doing it to her was the way that her subconscious made sense of it.
People who are getting confabulations do not realise that the memories are false. They have no control over them and they seem like the real thing so it is difficult to manage it. If you try and tell them that they are wrong it usually makes them angry because they know that they are right because they remember it......
The usual advice is to just go along with it, but sometimes you just can't. I found I said things like "I'm sorry you feel that way", or even just "mmm....."
This is the link for Sundowning @vterrazas
www.alzheimers.org.uk
Sundowning and dementia
Sometimes a person with dementia will behave in ways that are difficult to understand in the late afternoon or early evening. This is known as 'Sundowning'.
www.alzheimers.org.uk
