A little concerned need thoughts

[Strawberryshotrtcake]

I have a 73 year old mother who is becoming more difficult and I don’t know what to think do need a few options. She retired early at about 54 when my father died.
She is completely disagreeing with me over timelines and then arguing with me.
Example I mentioned the other day how my own grandma (her mother) used to come and stay every summer holidays for 2 weeks to help with childcare. My mum flatly denied this and claimed I was completely wrong she only came once in the summer and normally came in October. I have checked with my brother he agrees she came summer every year ( over his birthday!).
She repeats the same information constantly.
My brother is finding the same.
She is also pretty insensitive and getting blunter.
I am actually changing jobs (major career shift) to avoid being reliant on her for childcare although I would like some help in the holidays. But as you can see from above conversations not likely.
She has been quite rude about my job change stating “how boring “ I am moving away from very acute nursing to being a health visitor because of hours. (I’m a Paediatric nurse not adult)

Please can someone tell me is she going down the dementia line?

Personality changes, repeating things and losing memories can definitely all be indications of a dementia process. It is worth asking the GP to refer her to a memory clinic or old age psychiatry for assessment. I hope you can manage to get her seen quickly. There are some other things that look like a dementia that should be excluded and your GP should be able to rule those out.

All the best.

Rather than confronting your mother on things you know she has forgotten, just acknowledge to yourself you are more than likely correct, and allow her the same . It stops the bad feeling and arguments.

Thank you.
I will find out who her GP actually is and maybe drop them a letter.
The offer issue is she is an ex GP herself so has rather a lot of knowledge and influence so will be very tricky. She is also rather scary so I will take the advice and just stop challenging her but it’s so frustrating.

Gosh so many typos. Sorry one handed typing whilst balancing children is obviously not my strongest point!

Oh yes, doctors and retired doctors can definitely make the worst patients! My DF thought my DM had dementia but did nothing about it, so in the end my DH and I had to write to her GP expressing our concerns and asking if he could organise assessment for her (we told DF we were doing this so it wasn’t underhand, but just frustrating that he wouldn’t take the initiative himself).

You have my all sympathies but it is so important she is seen and assessed. I hope all goes well.

She may well be scared herself about dementia, so demonstrating to her that she's misremembered something is just going to make her more scared, so rather a (unintentionally) cruel thing to do. It also explains why she's so determined that she should be right.So just find a way of backing down gracefully.

but it is so important she is seen and assessed. Why? Is there really anything practical that can be done that outweighs the dis-benefit of knowing that you are headed for a long drawn out and ghastly death?

meredint the OP is asking if the changes she had noticed could be due to dementia. My argument would be that there are some things that look like dementia but aren’t, and they can be treatable. I think it’s important to find out if someone has obstructive sleep apnoea and would benefit from a cpap machine, for example. Or possibly an older person could be depressed, which is manifesting in behaviour changes and lack of attention which can look like dementia. That is very treatable. Or they might be hypothyroid, or they could have Parkinson’s disease. A proper assessment would look for dementia mimics which would be missed if nobody did anything.

There are also drugs for dementia. My grandmother was given them, although it was a completely futile exercise as she could never remember to take them, even with a clearly labelled dosset box (she never knew what day/time it was) and telephone reminders.

But it is an option worth considering.

It does sound like the onset of dementia, OP

If that's the case, though, then I agree with the advice given by PP not to keep challenging things you know to be wrong. It achieves nothing, and at best will annoy her: at worse it will frighten her, because as a former GP she'll be very familiar with the progression of dementia. After 10 years of a father who was suffering from vascular dementia I now get very nervous every time I have a memory blip - she may be feeling the same.