FTD but not yet?

Quilting brings calm

Some of you remember my earlier posts.  Brief reminder of the last one almost a month ago -  Mom got a 23 on her MMSE and the NP said probable MCI with depression.  You possibly also remember that I didn’t quite believe it was only MCI and if it was true, felt manipulated by my parents. 

Since then Mom has improved.  The mirtazapine seems to help her depression  and anxiety a lot.  She’s definitely not right, but she’s not crying and we can have actual conversations.  Yesterday I took her to her CT scan, out to lunch and then we actually stopped at JoAnn’s craft store for a quick purchase of something I needed.  She wanted something too. She thought she would try a simple  embroidery project. Wow. 

Now for the not so good news.  The  NP called with the results of the CT scan while I was in the Panera drive thru today. So I didn’t get anything written down. 

 They are not final as the neurologist will review them too.  Increased cerebral loss from the frontotemporal areas.  The NP feels the skull fracture and brain swelling from a fall in 2013 played a part in this. I think the ‘ increased ‘ comes from comparing this CT to one from 2019.  She feels this is consistent with mom’s memory loss,  lack of ability to make decisions, slow slow speech, and insecure tone. Micro vascular changes, but generalized and attributable to age.   

We discussed this and the NP feels vascular dementia is ruled out.  Too soon to tell if we will go down the path of FTD.  She’s only seen Mom once and she feels it’s too soon for her to say.  However, she recognized that 1) a score  of 23 is not normal and is more than old age 2) family members know more of day to day behavior, and 3 ) things only go one direction given enough time. 

I find this a little surprising.  My research seemed to point us toward vascular, and she’s not exhibiting behavior that would be deemed inappropriate. Unless you count the crying and her fixation on where Dad is and what he is doing if he’s not with her. 

Iris L.

Read about leukoaraiosis.

Iris