Memory clinic home visit - would they give a diagnosis?

[Paludarium]

MIL had a home visit from someone from the memory clinic today. This is her first appointment with anyone from the clinic. She said they did some memory tests and then told her she has “definitely some sort of dementia”, and will send her an appointment with a doctor.

MIL is hugely upset, but also doesn’t really remember what the memory clinic person actually SAID, and nothing seems to have been written down! I’m wondering if it’s likely they would give her a dementia diagnosis then and there or whether MIL (who is convinced she has dementia and is a very anxious person in general) might have jumped to conclusions?

DH will go with her to the hospital appointment, but that might not be for a while, and now we’re not sure if it’s to get a diagnosis or to get support for a diagnosis or what.

Your mum will be referred to the hospital for an MRI scan of her brain, which will determine what type of dementia she's got - the most common type is Alzheimer's, but it is possible to have mixed dementia, which is 2 types, so possibly Alzheimer's and Vascular, for example.

Apologies - I meant MIL

It sounds unlikely that it would have been put like that.

It also sounds so wrong that nobody else was there. I'm guessing therefore that it was meant to be an information gathering meeting and that does make it much less likely that a diagnosis was made.

Could you ring the clinic and say that your MIL believes she's been diagnosed bit can't remember anything else about the meeting, and could they write to her?

Relative of mine saw gp for memory test that she failed. She then had an MRI scan about 6 months later and consultant told them straight after what type of dementia she has. Unfortunately no support has been offered, but I doubt they have asked GP, so it’s down to he DH to do everything for her. A friend we have who lives in our road was diagnosed late 2019, he still manages basic food prep and can look after himself and walks to the local pub on his own and hasn’t really deteriorated. His family pay for him to go to a dementia centre twice a week, which he is happy to do. He lives with adult daughter.

That’s a good idea to ask them to write to her, thank you. The clinic must have written to her about the visit so she’ll have the contact details from that.

Oh it is so hard! She is at least willing to engage with memory clinic and doctors in general though so that’s something I suppose.

From my memory, my dad had Alzheimer’s, a referral to the hospital for a head scan followed the memory nurse visit. I thought it was a CT head scan not an MRI.

following that they had an appointment I believe with a psychiatrist from the MH part of the trust who diagnosed Alzheimer’s.

Thank you - that’s useful to know.

What everyone else said, mum had a visit from the memory service, they referred her for a brain scan then someone came out with the diagnosis, a prescription, a pile of papers about local services and the forms for attendance allowance. She'd forgotten all about it within a couple of days.

She hasn’t been told she’s being referred for a brain scan I don’t think. Although she may have been and it didn’t register.

Her issues do affect her taking in details in conversation/reading but she generally remembers that events happened or upcoming appointments, fortunately. (Or not fortunately because she will stress and stress and stress now, this which is really upsetting for her. And as soon as she gets stressed she will stop listening or processing or writing things down, which makes it very hard and exhausting to support her.)

Genuinely don’t know what’s going on with her. There really seem to be some cognition issues, but also she’s spent a long time outsourcing her worries and decision making and anxiety to her family, so it’s hard to tell where that stops and a new issue starts. We were really hoping the memory clinic would help at least figure out what’s going on and what kind of support she needs, but it’s not going well so far. ☹️