Letter to GP about mother?

completely agree and I have been through this with dementia in the close family, so I get it from both sides.

In the end, as a relative you have to just tell your parent/whoever that you are concerned and you're going to contact their GP.

and what is "a wellness check"? As a one-off, fine, I can say 'we need to check your blood pressures' - but every 6 months?
who does it?
what is in it?

A referral to a geriatrician saying what? What am I going to say to the patient about why I'm referring them, if they say they are fine, and I can't tell them that the daughter has been in touch?

A referral to a geriatrician. If that can't happen a wellness check every 6 months. Until something shows up.

This is a fantastic post and reply.

I can't talk for anyone else here but I genuinely see changes in my mother that are concerning me. I observed for months and months before I even approached a GP. This post really explains it very well. We are in an impossible situation seeing changes and pure stubbornness and anger and other changes.

Ps sorry @letsgoskiing do you think there could or should be better ways of going about diagnosing dementia, or does the current system work in the main?
I do have friends who's parents are concerned about their memory and could or have been diagnosed. Is it the few with parents who have perhaps always been 'difficult' who fall through the net?

I used to contact my mother's GP if I had any concerns about her health. They always invited her to the surgery for a routine appointment. They never told her I had spoken to them, and she was always please that they looked after her.

Thank you for your reply @letsgoskiing . Is there anything else you can suggest or are we all as bound as each other by the mental capacity act?

So I offer a wellness check, which is easy to do
I say - any concerns about your memory
The patient says no

what then if I can't say that a member of your family is worried about you?
charities can be great but actually they often say things without consulting with the people affected.

Isn't one of the symptoms of dementia, denial though? My mum would be enraged too, if I even suggested concern about it. I appreciate it puts you as a GP in a difficult position, but sending a letter is what some of the rhe charities recommend. I think it's in the hope that the surgery will offer a wellness check.
What should we do? Is it really a question of waiting till the wheels fall off? Most of us here are simply trying to protect our loved ones, even when they are being extremely difficult, but we come up against dead end after dead end if nobody will help 🙁

Thanks for the reply and it's great to get another perspective.

I know in my case if I was to make a GP appointment for my mother, it would enrage her.

I know in my case, my mother isn't bad enough yet but there's some behaviours that's not right. She's also neglecting her health now sometimes. I encourage her to make a GP appointment now and then. She went a year without any GP appointment. She was sick last week and ignored making an appointment. She did eventually go.

I am concerned about dementia. I think what I will do in time is to prepare a document for printing with all of my observations. I attended the same practice as my mother. I think what I will do is make a GP appointment for myself and ask my mother for help to come with me and blow my symptoms out of proportion to my mother and pretend to be every vulnerable and ask her to help me go to the doctor. And once in there, talk to the GP separately and maybe my mother could be called in.

I'm a GP. Letters that say 'I'm worried about mum, please don't tell her I have written' put us in an impossible situation. I'm not clear if she is concerned at the moment about her memory or not?

Firstly, without her consent, I can't even reply to a relative and confirm if the patient is registered with us or not
secondly - what on earth do you want the GP to do, if we can't reveal that she you have been in touch?

Make a GP appointment and take your Mum to see the GP.

Could you approach adult social services- that’s what we did with my aunt.

I was advised to do just this by a specialist at a dementia charity.

I'm in a similar position. There's definitely stuff going on with my mother but to everyone outside of the family she seems fine.

Compensation/negligent route

Do you or your relative have this in writing from your GP? Surely this could be considered negligent. Are they waiting for an accident to happen. I hope you have it in writing because if anything was to happen, you could go down the compensation route at some point.

We had the same. Mother, carers and GP/hospital HCPs all say she's fine. She can hold it together for the short times she's with them. As her family, we are noticing changes daily and it's so frustrating. She's making some very questionable decisions at the moment, and there's nothing we can do about it as she has mental capacity. She is extremely vulnerable. Siblings and I spend a lot of time doing damage limitation (and a great deal of worrying)

I wrote gp about relative. Triggered specialist nurse visit and whole host of other assessments .
Write again with a list of examples

@NorthernDancer that's laughably shit. Hope the relative has another go and then makes a complaint (and I'm the most pro-GP person on the planet).

I contacted a relative's GP some time ago and they declined to help. The senior partner's view was that everyone is assumed to have full capacity unless proven otherwise and they are not in the business of co-ercing people to come in to the surgery when they clearly don't want to.

Relative continues to decline, but as he won't go to the GP off his own bat, he remains undiagnosed, unsupported and a potential risk to himself and others.

I didn't even write a letter. With each of my parents I called the GP and said that I thought they had dementia and could they give them a memory test.

That's a perfectly acceptable way of doing it. I just prefer to enrol as you can take time to make sure you include all of your points, emphasis that you don't want them to pass on confidential information and you also have a trail of the concerns you raised and when.

My mum cheated a phone memory test. We got on to the GP as we didn't believe the results. GP repeated it with DB1 there and he saw what she was doing. At the beginning they gave her a phrase to remember and she wrote it down. When they asked what time of day it was she answered exactly as she looked at the clocks, day and date from the newspaper. He stopped the test and spoke to the GP. He took the prompts away and they started again. This time she thought it was spring 2003 instead of November 2020 and had no idea what time of day it was. As the GP knew she had checked both those a few minutes ago they didn't go any further with the test and referred her to the memory clinic.

I didn't even write a letter. With each of my parents I called the GP and said that I thought they had dementia and could they give them a memory test.

With my mum in 2018 the GP invited her to a well woman appointment which was a cover for the memory portion of the appointment which she did poorly on so was referred to the memory clinic.

In 2021 I asked for my dad to be similarly assessed. It was Covid times so the GP did the test on the phone. I was with dad and he tried to cheat. Plus mum who had dementia whispered some of the answers to him. Again he was referred to the memory clinic.

Neither had a head scan at any point but both were given Alzheimer's drugs.

I am going through a similar situation. My mother is 3 years younger than your mother.

Over the past few years I noticed behavioural stuff from her and mood stuff. There's things not right with her. Every day is different with her. My observations began two and half years ago but when they began I was able to go back further and there were issues for a few years. It's only within the past two years I am piecing so much together.

It's all behavioural and mood based with her. I have been to her GP a few times but they keep asking for memory loss. It's odd stuff that's happening.

It's not so much a memory loss. Her GP keeps asking me about memory loss. I know I don't have a diagnosis for her but I am leaning towards dementia. Exploring online and there's different types of dementia and depending on what kind, it affects the brain differently. Memory loss is likely the most common symptom but not all the time. In the later stages of dementia the different kinds can all mimick each other. It appears to me as of doctors are looking for a textbook style of forgetfulness before they might help me and my mother.

I'm coming to a hard place now with my mother. It's all behavioural. She wasn't feeling well last week and she kept refusing to go to the GP. We have plumbing problems that she's ignoring. There are so many issues with her. It's unreal.

I am thinking about writing a document on my laptop with a list of my observations. Hopefully writing to the GP.