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Original poster

I think my mother might be going senile, I don't know, any help?

16 replies

JandD · 14/10/2021 12:00

I wouldnt consider my mother to be very old as such. She's in her late 60s. I think she is going senile or there might be an old age condition setting in but I don't know the signs or symptoms of old age conditions. There just some stuff happening.

  • She used to have daggers for my back when I was younger. She mellowed over the years but she is going back to her old ways and she's not being nice. She's actually rude. She will talk to me if she wants or feels like it. If I try and make a conversation with her, its met with one word grunt replies like Yeah!, No, Yeah, No. Just one word grunt replies. Every day is different and I don't know what side of the swing I will be greated with when she gets up. This is the biggest thing.
  • the other morning the mail came and we have a new postman. He hasn't discovered the letterbox yet. He had a parcel and he knocked on the door and she ran away from him and the door. She's now running away from the post some mornings and then other mornings she is OK with the postman.
  • She's gone into a massive springcleaning mode and the front room of the house has been cleaned all week. The room is clean and she is cleaning it again. We are not due any visitors. The most difficult aspect of this is that she has an attitude of 'all hands on decks mode' but I have a job to go to and I don't have time to get into intense cleaning.
  • she's bleaching the bathroom every day where it now spells like a swimming pool and you can easily choke on the spell of the bleach. It's awful.
  • she was awful last year about this. She was in the bathroom nearly every hour cleaning the room as if the home was a public establishment and I was a carrier of covid and there was disease in the toilet. Even though I was following the guidelines on lockdown and I was not sick or ill during the year. I also got the vaccine early during to working in healthcare. She just believed I was slumping covid into the toilet.
  • she's not able to conor8the public health advice of following hygiene and manners on coughing and sneezing and she does it all out into the open without covering cough and sneezes. She likes to wear her masks under her nose in public too.
  • the other morning I was feeding the cat and I walked into the kitchen with the can of cat food and she ran to her breakfast to cover it as if the caan of food was going to fall into her breakfast even though i and the can wasn't anywhere near her breakfast. Almost as if she believes there's fumes from the can that will fly into her breakfast.
  • sometimes she is mixing up names now too but she's not too bad on this just yet.

What do you think, is she going senile or is there some other old age condition setting in.. I don't know.

Any help would be appreciated.

OP posts:
CatrinVennastin · 14/10/2021 12:03

I would get her to see her GP. They can do a dementia screening.

Both my IL's had dementia and looking back it started earlier than we thought.

HollowTalk · 14/10/2021 12:03

How old are you, OP, and why are you living with your mum?

FortunesFave · 14/10/2021 12:04

It sounds like OCD if I'm honest. Not senility. I advise you to visit your doctor...alone...and tell them all about this. The doctor will have a much better idea of what might be going on AND how to tackle it.

It doesn't sound right though.

Interested in this thread?

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Families
Hellocatshome · 14/10/2021 12:07

It sounds like it might be mental health related rather than dementia, it also sounds like you dont like her much.

Original poster
JandD · 14/10/2021 12:10

Sorry

Conor8the is supposed to be 'comprehend'. She's not able to comprehend.

I do t know what happened there when I was writing.

OP posts:
Original poster
JandD · 14/10/2021 12:18

I do think there is something going on. We heard a vehicle the other morning but it was around about the time as the mail and she panicked and ran to her room to hide out there instead of answering the knock at the door. I was getting ready for work and I had to burst out from my room to answer the door and tell her it's only the mail.

I do think there is something going on with her. She was never OCD when I was growing up. How will I get her to go to her GP? If she goes to her GP she will go if she has any physical signs of illness like a cold. She's not going to go for a dementia screening.

OP posts:
RadioSixMusicLover · 14/10/2021 12:21

@HollowTalk

How old are you, OP, and why are you living with your mum?
Wtf has that got to do with it, or you?
CharlotteRose90 · 14/10/2021 12:34

@HollowTalk

How old are you, OP, and why are you living with your mum?
That question is absolutely none of your business. If you can’t offer advice then no need to post.
Maverickess · 14/10/2021 12:50

I work with people with dementia, and people without who develop it, it sounds more like anxiety or a similar mental health issue than dementia at the moment, but, bear in mind that dementia does cause anxiety and depression and some odd behaviour, especially in the early stages where people are able to cover up, mask or brush off certain symptoms.

You can't force her to see a doctor, or even see there's a problem and sometimes people who can see a problem, don't want to admit that because they fear 'losing' themselves and losing control over their lives.
The intense cleaning, covering of food etc could well be a covid reaction, but it's at odds with the coughing/sneezing and not covering her mouth.

I would try and speak to the GP yourself if you can and explain your worries, are there any other family members/friends that have noticed differences in her and who could possibly talk to her with you?
Starting with something benign like "You don't seem quite yourself recently, is there anything wrong at the moment?" Or similar, you have to be very careful how you approach something like this, because it could lead to her completely shutting down rather than opening up.

Original poster
JandD · 14/10/2021 12:57

There's some mornings when I am getting ready for work and there isn't one word from her. There's some days I leave for work nearly in tears. My job can be demanding. Its different every day and it can be long and intense too. There's some nights when I get home and often it can be late like 8 or 9 or 10 at night and she's still up. She's sitting her her chair like it's a throne watching TV and she wouldnt necessarily be glues to what she's watching and often there's isn't any talk or speech from her. She might say hello but that is it. There's no conversation any more from her like she will not ask me how I am or how my day was and any attempt of conversation from me is shut down. The other night I came home from work, tired and hungry and I wanted to make a dinner. It was too late to cook so I decided on a waffle in the toaster but there was nothing but silence in the kitchen and I had to just walk out and go to bed.

OP posts:
Original poster
JandD · 14/10/2021 13:00

Maverickess,

I am on my own. There's nobody I can call on to help me. I have one sibling living at home but he's a drug user and he's useless.
I have siblings living abroad but they are in another country. She has some siblings but a lot of them are living in other counties and are too far away. They are in their 70s now and they have their own problems and health conditions so I don't want to burden them. There is one Aunty within the same county as me. She is a sister to my mom but she's dealing with her own issues. She lost a son this summer and I don't want to burden her because she would still be in mourning, no doubt.

OP posts:
Original poster
JandD · 14/10/2021 13:09

'The intense cleaning and covering of food could be a covid reaction'

This doesn't make sense because if she's paranoid of covid and she's doing that because of a fear of covid or something, she doesn't have a fear of other settings like public transport where she is sharing a bus with other people. She goes regularly into the city to do some shopping. About once a week into the city.

OP posts:
Original poster
JandD · 14/10/2021 13:10

I was sick this summer but kow with covid symptoms so I am to and from the doctor and go office myself so next time I go, I will have a GP with my GP. We go to the same GP practice.

OP posts:
Hellocatshome · 14/10/2021 15:56

It was too late to cook so I decided on a waffle in the toaster but there was nothing but silence in the kitchen and I had to just walk out and go to bed.

Why did you have to walk out of the kitchen and go to bed because there was silence in the kitchen? A lot of what you have written sounds like the kind of things that house mates say about fellow housemates that wind them up with their quirks. Are you sure you are not just finding her tough to live with and things are annoying you more than they would usually?

FortunesFave · 15/10/2021 22:58

@Hellocatshome

It was too late to cook so I decided on a waffle in the toaster but there was nothing but silence in the kitchen and I had to just walk out and go to bed.

Why did you have to walk out of the kitchen and go to bed because there was silence in the kitchen? A lot of what you have written sounds like the kind of things that house mates say about fellow housemates that wind them up with their quirks. Are you sure you are not just finding her tough to live with and things are annoying you more than they would usually?

I just thought the exact same thing. A fair bit of what OP is saying sounds like extreme irritation with her Mother's ways.

"Sitting in her chair like it's a throne" sounds like you're just annoyed with her in general OP. And the waffle thing....weird...why do you need noise to make a waffle?

Original poster
JandD · 16/10/2021 16:22

I don't need noise or conversation to cook. With my mom not talking or making any conversation, the atmosphere was so cold in the room, I left the room.

It's a whole entire serious of little things that leads me to believe that there's something not 100% right with my mom.

I joined a Facebook group for dementia and some of the posters have experienced similar to me. Not so much similar events as to what I listed above. Somoe posters knews there was something off for years before there was an official diagnosis. Another poster wrote she is so sick of others believing that dementia is memory loss and she explained that often it is memory loss but other times it doesn't have to be or the memory loss comes in at later stages. She explained that in some cases dementia can be a decline in interactions with others and life skills.

Another person advice to keep a diary with dates and events and episodes and go to the doctor when there's stuff happening more frequently.
So I have a list of stuff that indicates:

  • paranoia
  • anxiety
  • obsessiveness like with going overboard with cleaning
  • a lack of sense
OP posts:
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