Yes, it is okay. Share whatever feels right to you.
As pragmatic and even-keeled about all this as I am most of the time, occasionally an emotion will catch me off guard and it just has to happen until it is over. Hopefully the timing is right to be private.
We recently lost our family dog suddenly (old age). That dog's death has really bothered me too much and I have to wonder if some of the grief over our wonderful, old dog was really something related to Mom's situation. The way I'm wired who knows???
Very insightful,
@Just Joe. The mind is very good at finding ways to process things, in ways it thinks we can handle.
@wenchsenior, my sympathy. All very understandable. Your thoughts on all of this make so much sense to me; best wishes.
I’ve read this thread with interest, having had one family member with dementia.
Apologies in advance for this question, but I had a recent experience that left me kind of shook. I spent a few hours on different occasions recently doing outreach at a memory place.
The place is the highest of high-end care. There’s a very high ratio of attendants to patients and the whole place has been done up to look like a hotel. There are no visible signs other than the locking doors and alarms that it is a hospital.
Patients/residents with whom I was interacting are presumably the ones in best shape. The first time I was there, I came away feeling good about these “gentle souls” — as delusional as some of them were. The second time, however, the anger, aggression, potential for violence, delusions, and regression to childlike concerns, made me suddenly realize that this was an insane asylum. Behavior that you’ve seen in any of the classic movies. In fact, I googled dementia or Alzheimer’s and psychiatric disorders/psychosis.
The only thing these people had in common was they were all visibly elderly (and extremely wealthy). I’m not sure what I’m trying to say, but I understand from my own experience and those described in this thread that we’re dealing with wholesale personality changes, delusions, and other behaviors that we would consider schizophrenic, BPD or psychotic in younger people. And I guess my point is a lot of old people in memory care places are psychotic. Lol.
I understand too, that there are comorbidities. Also, my googling revealed that mental illness in earlier life is a risk for Alzheimer’s/dementia.
I guess my question is what are the differences between psychosis and Alzheimer’s/dementia. I’ve read about it, but I would love some more insights.
Hugs for all who are dealing with this. But if you are able to get someone into one of these places, I don’t think you should feel too bad about it.
I'm not a psychologist, but like a previous poster, suspect that "we would consider schizophrenic, BPD, or psychotic" isn't quite accurate. Maybe the other poster's comment about overlapping symptoms is a better way to look at it.
You're probably saying that the changes in personality remind you of these other diagnoses. I can see the similarity in some general way. But I think dementia is a different process, and making overly strong comparisons with "schizophrenic, BPD or psychotic" is unwise, except as a way to recognize "wow, this thing can lead to really big visible personality changes in a short time."
The more you read, the more dementia makes sense on its own terms. I was never able to read whole books on the subject, but the parts of them that I read really helped me.
One key in my own experience as family member was the realization that when the brain tries a normal function and can't access the relevant memory at first, it just fills in something else as the input to that function. In this stage it looks like the person is spouting nonsense, but they're only a step away from normal rationality. In my dad's case, knowing his stories better and better as time went on, sometimes I could even see how the "nonsense" was related to what he'd been trying to think of.
Another key aspect was to recognize how many of us have very different layers of our personality, and may be only a step or two of confusion or frustration or suspicion away from acting very differently. Just because our memory is shot doesn't mean we won't defend ourselves. In the lonely confusion of memory loss, it's pretty common for calm gentle people to seemingly flip into intense anger or frustration, or other behaviors they wouldn't normally have done. Add lack of memory and some reduction in the processing that leads to manners, and boom, it looks like a big personality change.
From watching my dad, there's a difference between personality and behavior. To me, personality is the underlying tendency given x conditions. Dad throughout his life had a jovial outer layer and a more hidden angry one that would lash out if he felt badly treated. This did not change, but the hidden angry one was hidden less often in assisted living, because more frequently, his expectations were not met, either by his own mind or by the perceived behavior of others. Yet it was also quite observable that whenever the situation allowed, he tended toward joviality. His behavior changed, not necessarily his personality, if that makes sense.
Maybe I'll revise my terms after a real psychologist comments. Or maybe Dad's case was just milder and he died before reaching the later stages; every case is different, maybe all these other diagnoses apply sometimes. Anyway, much appreciation for all the people learning as they go along, and trying to understand this very confusing process!
