My mom has started - a few months ago now - tapping her foot almost all the time. It's like a person who's impatiently waiting for something, but she's not impatient when she's doing it. It's like a tick, and she never had any before. She stops if she's engrossed in something on TV, but not always - sometimes if she's talking or watching a show or something that should distract her from that, she keeps doing it. Is it a symptom?
Carol
My mother does this as well - it's very loud, and sporadic, and never really a particular tune that I can pick out. It can be quite annoying! I never heard this discussed before but here it is!
I ask my mother once about the humming -- why she does it (in a kind and round-about way) and she said, "I like it" !!
When my FIL was in the hospital toward the end of his life there was a lovely woman on his floor who used to be a seamstress. She was relatively young for dementia - late 40's I believe. She developed a compulsion where she had to "feel fabrics"......running her hands over all the sheets, bedspreads and clothing and would wear her hands raw. She could not stop doing it and the staff finally put paper gloves on her hands so she wouldn't injure herself.
It was very sad.
These compulsions can manifest in many forms including humming, food hoarding, talking to themselves; my mother's is about kleenex hoarding. You will find balled-up kleenex in every sleeve, pocket, under every pillow and cushion, in pajamas, etc. and I have to go through all her laundry very carefully so as not to spoil a load from shredded kleenex!
So I am glad you shared, my mom likes Kleenex's but we have not gone to hoarding them she just uses them forever but she has always been this way.
And my dad, who had dementia, used to touch his fingertip to his thumb constantly, kind of like drumming his fingers but much quieter!
Early-onset Parkinson's runs in my family. I also have no sense of smell...an early sign of Parkinson's. But...it also could be nothing.
Angle