Recent diagnosis forgotten

[lol68]

Hello,

I'm hoping someone on here can offer some advice please.
My Mum has very recently (3 weeks ago) been diagnosed with Alzheimers. She was very calm and accepting when she was told this by the doctors but by the next day had forgotten that she'd even been to the hospital.
I don't know whether I need to tell her again that she has alzheimers or just to let her forget. She knows she has to go back to the hospital but just thinks she's going for a check up.
Any advice would help please?

 

[canary]

Hello lol and welcome to talking Point.
That is exactly the reaction I have had from my mum too. I once mentioned to her that she has dementia and she got so upset that I have never mentioned it again. She now does not remember that she has anything wrong (high blood pressure, atrial fibrillation, heart and kidney failure....). but I think this is common with dementia, so I dont keep reminding her.
When she says proudly that she keeps herself very fit (she has now lost almost all of her mobility, bless her) I just say that, yes, she is doing very well.

 

[Beate]

Would she gain much by knowing she has it? I doubt it. OH and I have never spoken about his diagnosis and just lived our lives. If she thinks she's going for a check-up, no point in correcting her.

 

[fizzie]

I don't think anyone needs to know - it must be really upsetting. My mum was never formally diagnosed because we knew it was vascular and there wasn't any point. We wouldn't have got anything extra and she would have been upset lose-lose. However she denied she even had a slight memory problem almost to the end - we had terrible memories.....good for her, happy delusions lol

 

[Countryboy]

Hi difficult question to answer without knowing your mums age , the reason I say that is if she still at work and driving a vehicle there will a lot of hurdles or worse bureaucrats form filling etc. , ( if the answer Yes she will need to know ) however if she is retired and doesn’t drive (well she doesn’t need to know )

 

[Rageddy Anne]

Legal and finance planning.

Sorry to read about Mum forgetting her diagnosis. I thought my husband's forgetting was a mixture of genuine forgetfulness, but with an element of not wanting to admit to something he didn't want to face.

We were encouraged to attend some meetings for newly diagnosed people, where there were presentations and advice; all very helpful except that he veered from insisting the diagnosis was a mistake, or it had all been a conspiracy. Only once or twice did he acknowledge the truth, but then he 'd say it was far too soon to worry about the future. So I learned not to insist, or even mention it, as he would get upset and angry.

Hopefully you will be able to help your mum in a tactful way, as there are some things I wish now, with hindsight, that I could have got in place on the legal and financial side. Thankfully, he and I had recently set up reciprocal WILLS. And somehow I got him to agree to setting up a simple exchange of POWERS OF ATTORNEY but only the one for FINANCE, and not for HEALTH AND WELFARE.

Because he had always prided himself on looking after our finances, and didn't like me getting involved, he continued this on his own, but when I finally had to take over everything was in a dreadful muddle, and has me worrying, which could have been avoided.

If your Mum has valuable assets, and maybe you 'd rather not get involved, now might be a good time to encourage her to find a financial adviser you and she can trust. A lady fom the Alzheimers Association mentioned that there's an organisation called SOLLA whose members specialise in helping people in later life.

If she has a shared bank account, now would be a good time to make sure she also has a seperate one of her own.

This is just from my own experience, and hopefully your mum will be much easier to help. It seems to be widely accepted that it doesn't help to insist on correcting a person when they can't realise they're not remembering right..

 

[lol68]

Thank you all so much for your replies.

Luckily my Dad put wills in place for himself and my Mum before he died. Mum's also agreed to me having Power of Attorney as she has never had to deal with money issues (Dad did it all).

I feel a bit like I'm wading through mud at the moment. We were given the diagnosis at the hospital, given loads of leaflets to read and basically told to come back in a month. So now I'm thinking 'why didn't I ask this' or 'they didn't tell me that' Hopefully the next appointment will give me the opportunity to ask questions.

 

[canary]

Thank you all so much for your replies.

Luckily my Dad put wills in place for himself and my Mum before he died. Mum's also agreed to me having Power of Attorney as she has never had to deal with money issues (Dad did it all).

I feel a bit like I'm wading through mud at the moment. We were given the diagnosis at the hospital, given loads of leaflets to read and basically told to come back in a month. So now I'm thinking 'why didn't I ask this' or 'they didn't tell me that' Hopefully the next appointment will give me the opportunity to ask questions.

Or you could always ask us

Glad the basics are in place - it makes life so much easier.

 

[Annie C]

My father and my mother-in-law both have dementia diagnoses. My dad doesn't know what all the fuss is about, although he does know the diagnosis was made.

I'm not convinced my MIL had a clue what they were saying to her at the memory clinic, but she is quite clear that there is nothing wrong with her, this despite what for most of us would be very clear indications that there is.

We are letting them both continue to believe that all is well. There seems little point in doing otherwise.