Hallucinations? Late stage

Marzipan39

Hello all,

My mom has stage six if not stage seven, but she has been having hallucinations for quite some time, almost a few years now.

She believes she has sons (I am her only child), and that there are people coming over or are already here. She used to buy food for them when we still let her do the shopping. Now they tell her what to do or to not listen to what my dad has to say (he’s her main caregiver). She fights and argues or gets flustered when told that they’re not here or to not listen to them.

For context, she does not know who we are or sometimes forgets she’s been married nearly 50 years. She does not recognize that she is “Mom” so I have to call her by her name. She is 68 and I am 32.

She’s still active and walks around a good deal. We’ve had lots of issues with her walking down the road to “go home”. She still speaks but it’s all
parts of phrases or random words.
She hasn’t had too many incontinence issues yet but she gets scared of the mirror person and won’t go to the bathroom because “there’s
someone else in there”.

She scored a 3 out of 30 on the mental cognizance test and they gave her two years left.

Any advice on how to deal with this stage would be welcome.

M1

welcome to the forum. Have you talked to her doctor about the hallucinations? There are medications that can help tamp them down and help with the agitation and combativeness. These aren't pleasant for her either, so you're not just medicating to make your life easier, it's to improve her quality of life too. Aside from medication, a lot of folks swear that music helps.

harshedbuzz

Hi and welcome.

I am sorry for your reason to be here but happy you found this place.

I agree with @M1 that a medication to quiet her hallucinations would improve her quality of life day-to-day. This kind of confusion isn't pleasant for her and makes the delivery of quality care difficult to impossible.

I am kind of surprised that she's still mostly continent given her recent 3/30 screening result. Are you sure your dad is reporting this accurately? My mom was really adamant that dad didn't have any problems "in that area" which resulted in her doing a lot more cleaning than was necessary to cling to that illusion.

The mirror confusion is very common in later stage dementia. You can buy window film to cover mirrors to avoid this. Most apply with water and can be peeled off easily.

Window film at Lowes.com: Search Results

You might need to be careful about reflections on glass and windows in the evenings when the lights come on. Even artwork with portraiture can be problematic for some. My parents had a 2-story gallery wall with all kinds of art on it. Mom left him for a few days to attend her sister's funeral believing dad to be OK with a friend checking in daily. (she was in denial about his dementia and he was still undiagnosed at this point) Dad had a psychotic episode and ripped every portrait or print under glass off the wall-- some were 15' up. He also broke a window in which he "saw the bad guy" looking in at him.

HB

Emily 123

I would add to the excellent advice above that it might help to go with whatever she's telling you she sees or hears, as long as it doesn't put her in harm's way--her brain's short-circuiting, so to her the hallucinations are very real. Resist the urge to try correct her--no sense in getting in an argument you won't win and that will agitate her. Then you'll just have to get her settled in again.

I agree with HB that maybe your dad misheard the '3/30', but people can score all over the place and their behaviors and ability to do activities can vary widely. For Alzheimer's the stages are a consistent progression, but other dementias progress differently. Here's a detailed checklist for behaviors that may be seen as AD progresses: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/6372d16ea4e02c7ce64425b7/t/63f7b80d80d8aa3e3aa4a47d/1677178894184/DBAT.pdf

If you go to youtube and search for dementia + hallucinations there are a lot of videos that review approaches for folks with hallucinations. Teepa Snow has an excellent series.