I've noticed the following things from my mom the past several months and unless it's chemo brain, I want to know from those taking care of those with dementia if the following examples are signs of dementia.
She forgot a cousin of mine and her husband had their first child before they got married. She thought her grandmother turned 90 in 1991 instead of 2001. She and my grandfather raised my mom. She forgot about a friend of mine who was reported missing a little over 2 years ago. She asks multiple times how I enjoyed my dinner and asks more than once how many people were at the grocery store. She got the name wrong of a former priest from my hometown while we talked about the Catholic school that use to be around until it closed when I was a teen and got his name mixed up with the priest who was in my hometown at the time I was born.
She thought I still had my Dad's golf clubs in the trunk of my car. They've been out of the car and in the house since 2022. She didn't remember the name of one of our former state senators and the time he ran for Congress. She forgot the monthly phone bill can be paid on the computer and we've paid it on the computer multiple times when it couldn't be paid on her iPhone. She didn't understand me talking about the time I picked up a copy of the local paper at our local Walmart late in 2021 and that it was the first time I went in there since Covid hit. It didn't hit her that the last time I was there was when Covid hit and the Covid concerns were why I stayed away for almost 2 full years. She thought she still had chocolate bars and that one was still in the fridge, but it had been well over a year since she last had one. She asked me if I liked the food at one of the out of town restaurants we would eat at every time we went there. We've had their food just twice since she became immobile and in both instances, they had their food truck in my hometown.
Prior to one shower, she thought it had been a 10 day gap between showers and I told her it was 16. She didn't really believe me and I keep track of how often she's around the house. She thought one of the former reporters from our statewide news station was still there and I told her he had been gone for a couple of years. She asked back to back nights about a baby from an airplane plant that I planted several months prior and how long it had been planted. On a couple of occasions, she thought the college football game between Alabama and Vanderbilt from 2024 was this past season and I told her it was Florida State that beat Alabama, not Vanderbilt. She forgot one of the restaurants in town had chicken sandwiches, but remembered after several seconds. We get them pretty regularly.
She forgot the score of one of the college bowl games 12 hours after it was played and kept calling Oregon "Ohio" several times leading up to and sometimes during the bowl game between Oregon and Indiana. I also had to tell her those were the two teams playing in the span of several minutes. A few nights back, she saw a snippet of Tom Brokaw and she asked me who it was.
Even though she keeps insisting she's physically better despite being up and around the house 2-3 times a month, she let her driver's license expire last month and she has yet to tend to the key things regarding my grandmother's estate or get her gravestone ordered. She got the order approving the final distribution of my grandmother's estate a month ago and she told me it was needed along with the other key documents when it came to addressing the key things.
There isn't a lack of urgency regarding the bills, but the lack of urgency with what I mentioned, as well as physical therapy, reminds me of my grandmother. She had Alzheimer's with dementia and had a big lack of urgency from the bills to getting ready to go somewhere in the years before she went to the NH.
Despite her near life-long paranoia, she's mentally sharp, but I wonder if she is in the early stages of dementia.
Today, she had me mail off a pocket-size booklet that had the Constitution and Declaration of Independence inside to the owner of a jewelry store she's bought jewelry from in the past. She said she had a hunch he needed it, even though she later noted he isn't connected with him on Facebook.
I then proceeded to search online to see if he had said or done anything controversial and I couldn't find anything at all. No news articles or political blog posts, nothing, just business-related articles from several months back. I typed in the man's name and a couple of the main news publications in my home state and I saw some very recent articles about a prosecuting attorney with the same name. I made note of that to her while seeing if she mistook the jewelry man for the attorney and she insisted it was for the jewelry man. I asked if the jewelry man said or did anything questionable and she said no. I even checked the jewelry store's FB page and there wasn't anything on there beyond advertisements for rings, necklaces, and watches.
Ultimately, this doesn't quite go down as a potential dementia symptom, though she wouldn't have sent this to him 2+ years ago. While helping her tend to her emails, I came across an email from the owner of the jewelry store promoting an event involving one of our senators and that led to her deciding to send the booklet to him.
As we know from your previous posts, you went to college over a decade ago but have confined yourself to your mother's home since then because she won't wear depends so you have chosen to enslave yourself to her urinary schedule. You haven't had a paying job as an adult and you have expressed sadness over not being able to have a girlfriend or wife or children because of choosing to let your mother's refusal to wear Depends rule your life. You have been waiting for your inheritance from your grandmother. Well, good news, the inheritance is here! Use your mother's share to hire someone else to wait on her bathroom schedule and use your share to move out and start your adult life. Don't waste your thirties the way you wasted your twenties. You can still recover from the delayed start and have a full life. You just need to decide to get started.
For example, one time when me, my mom, and a family friend went to my grandmother's house to clean it up, the family friend asked her a couple of very basic questions. She asked her what year it was and my grandmother answered "Two-thousand what." She then asked who the current president was and my grandmother didn't have a clue. It was in early 2009 and it was not long after the Obama Inauguration.
Earlier tonight, she asked me twice how many people were at the restaurant where we got our dinner and how I enjoyed my dinner.
Not sure if she would still have Chemo fog but because grandmom had ALZ there's a chance your mother does too. In my family, Dads siblings who had it showed signs in their mid 70s. The others died too early to contract it. My grandmom had its as did 2 of her children. Her sister and her daughter.
I would take Mom for a good physical. It could be something physical. You need to know.
It's good news that your grandmother's estate can be distributed. Now you can hire care for your mother or place her in a facility, give up your voluntary enslavement to her and her bathroom schedule, and finally start your own life.
Don't let her guilt-trip you anymore. You've given up more than a decade of your life to her selfishness. Enough is enough.
Maybe she has dementia and the chemo brain is exacerbating it. Inform her doctor.
For example, one time when me, my mom, and a family friend went to my grandmother's house to clean it up, the family friend asked her a couple of very basic questions. She asked her what year it was and my grandmother answered "Two thousand what." She then asked who the current president was and my grandmother didn't have a clue. It was in early 2009 and it was right after Barack Obama was sworn in.
This could be stress
It could also be simply forgetting something
It could be everything.
I think no matter what you need to share this with her doctors.
Your last line you say that she's mentally sharp. This sort of contradicts your entire post.
It is good to keep a log of what is going on.
It is good to keep her doctors informed of any changes.
What I meant by the last line was she knows what day it is, what year it is, etc. She isn't at the point my grandmother got to in her battle with Alzheimer's and dementia.
For example, one time when me, my mom, and a family friend went to my grandmother's house to clean it up, the family friend asked her a couple of very basic questions. She asked her what year it was and my grandmother answered "Two thousand what." She then asked who the current president was and my grandmother didn't have a clue. This was in early 2009 and it was right after Barack Obama was sworn in.
Either way your mom seems to be having some mental decline whether from the chemo or from dementia.
I wish you well in getting things figured out with her doctors.
Of late, she's complained about a former preacher of ours, thinking that, despite evidence to the contrary, he isn't helping anyone out at his new church via food ministry. I reminded him of what he did regarding food for Christmas last month and she also forgot he told her in a FB message that he did indeed have a food ministry set up at his church.