Don’t know what to do - Mum scared

[BlueBell50]

Mum is 91, we’ve had odd incidents over the last couple of years where she has been most insistent that she has been to someone’s house or store when she hasn’t. She has an elaborate and detailed explanation, which would convince anyone who didn’t know the truth, that that she was correct. There have been other instances where she has reported conversations she has had that haven’t been entirely true. I’ve put a lot down to her not hearing well and filling in the gaps, hearing the first part of a story wondering what has happened next and then thinking her version was the truth or simply dreaming. I’ve either gone along with her tales or said I don’t remember you going to x but perhaps you did without me. It hasn’t caused anyone trouble and I’ve felt let sleeping dogs lie etc.

Over the weekend she told me, and my aunt, that an acquaintance was in hospital with broken leg. Aunt was upset and called the family to find he had hurt his leg but definitely not in hospital with broken leg.

Yesterday she rang to tell me that in spite of lockdown aunt a was visiting aunt b. Aunt b had phoned to say they were sat in garden enjoying lunch. Later on mum called in tears. She had spoken to aunt b, asked how the visit had gone and was told it hadn’t happened, and they hadn’t spoken earlier in the day. She must have imagined it all.

She is in bits, saying I’m going mad, what will I do. I’ve tried to reassure her it was probably a dream (which I think it was) but to no avail.

I don’t know what to do. Any ideas given I’m in work, doing all the shopping for both households etc. If I was staying in I’d go round but I’m scared of passing anything on as I’m in contact with lots of others. She’s so frightened and would be annoyed (or more likely disbelieve me) if I told her this was not a new occurrence.

Older people are very suseptable to infection that can compleatly knock them off and make them appear less lucid. The first thing to do is contact the gp to rule out an infection(uti is often the culprit).
From there the gp can do a physical and mh assessment. If a physical cause is ruled out then he may refer your mum to a memory clinic. Although this service could beunavailable at present. Hearing may well be a factor for filling in blanks x

Mo81 talks good sense - does she have any other cognitive or memory problems? If not I would suspect infection too - my Mum has a similar thing of forgetting or mis-remembering conversations and it gets noticeably much worse when she is ill, I think the infection itself can cause confusion (especially UTIs), she once went absolutely loopy with a UTI (paranoid, incoherent, delusional etc), but went back to normal when antibiotics kicked in. Plus with her if she doesn't sleep well she can get a bit 'foggy' - she sounds quite similar to your Mum in that she usually has a basis in reality - either a conversation she swears blind she has had with me but actually it was with my aunt or something, or conversations she did actually have but distorted or exaggerated like you describe. When it first started I was terrified it was the start of dementia or something but it doesn't seem to have gotten worse over time at least so that's something. I think a trip to the GP would be sensible - if you think she wouldn't agree/ask for a memory/cognitive test herself you could speak to the receptionist/GP discreetly beforehand and ask them if they would bring it up sensitively with her...?

In the meantime sounds like you are handling it perfectly, I try and avoid arguing with my mum too much when she's having an 'episode', unless it's something really important, sometimes this means she goes on believing that Aunty Jean's neighbour won the lottery (when actually they won £20 on a scratchcard or something), but it just upsets and worries her to be constantly contradicted...