My mother’s never been formally diagnosed with dementia as far as I know (I know she’s had memory assessments, but I don’t know the outcomes because she doesn’t remember and her GP doesn’t tell us). But my sibling and myself are both agreed she shows fairly strong signs. She forgets words, and uses inappropriate ones rather than paraphrasing (e.g. traffic lights for roundabout); she forgets events and “invents” alternatives (i.e. a christening becomes a concert, because there was music); she cannot learn anything new (new mobile phone, door phone); she’s forgetting old skills (was a professional cook, can now barely cook for herself).
She’s been living in a retirement complex for about 18 months, and it’s been really good for her; prior to moving there, she was at the doctor’s 3 or 4 times a week and had been hospitalised several times for falls and delirium, but since moving there has ben to the doctor’s exactly twice.
My sibling visits at least once a week (I live abroad, so my contact is over the phone since she lost the ability to use Skype/Facetime).
We know that her symptoms get worse when she’s depressed. Yesterday she was depressed because she’d switched off the freezer (no idea why) and all the food had defrosted. She rang my sibling in a panic and sibling went to visit. She was trying to cook as much of the defrosted food as she could, but had the oven on the defrosting setting rather than baking/roasting. She admitted to my sibling that she couldn’t remember how the cooker or microwave worked. Sibling sorted it all out, then rang me to update me. Later, she rang me. Had no memory that sibling had visited her that day or that she’d had a problem with the freezer. However, she was depressed at the prospect of spending her upcoming birthday and then Christmas alone, because she had forgotten that she had been invited to spend both dates with sibling. The worst bit was that when I reminded her of this, she became suspicious because she couldn’t believe she would have forgotten something “so important”. This is the first time she’s been suspicious.
She still shops for herself, cooks for herself (somehow), goes for a walk every day, can shower and dress herself, keeps her flat relatively clean. But she doesn’t remember anything from one moment to the next, is forgetting life-long skills and invents things to fill the gaps in her memory. On the phone, her conversation is on a 3-5 minute loop which can go on for an hour or so. She knows who I am, but sometimes she clearly forgets who she’s speaking to and starts telling me about myself.
Where are we and what should we be planning for? Is this still mild cognitive impairment? My feeling is that we’re about to lurch into something much more serious, but at the moment she seems to be in a grey area between coping and needing residential care. Unsurprisingly, she has a history of sacking people we employ to check in on her and do a few care tasks.
Sibling and I both have POA for legal but not health matters, and sibling manages her finances. Our mother is 87.