My granny is 89 and lives alone. She has gone over the past few years from being a social butterfly to living a very insular and lonely life as friends have had strokes, dementia etc. COVID clearly didn’t help. She is supported financially but is constantly hungry to be with family and doesn’t respect others’ boundaries, doing things like surprise visits and drastically overstaying her welcome. She is very loved but she also exhausts the people around her. Her grandchildren all have young kids and/or work etc and can’t spend hours on the phone or in person with her constantly.

Conversations with her tend to be long and go around the same loops.

She has also had some bouts of confusion involving not knowing where she is, who she is with etc and she gets very anxious, but it seems to pass after a day or a few days and she’s then more lucid for a while.

She is fiercely adamant that she’s independent, wants to be in control, doesn’t want anyone telling her what to do and won’t move somewhere with more people with time on their hands around eg a retirement community. (There are family resources that can pay for her to live somewhere nice). Yet, she’s clearly really unhappy and lonely.

Any advice on how to proceed would be much appreciated. The GP has been alerted after the last bout of confusion as we think it might be dementia and they showed up and took a urine sample…