I have an 83 year old mother with Alzheimer's disease who is living with us. I am her son in her 50s and she lives with me and my wife. She has had delusions and hallucinations in the past, but we have managed to help calm her down. However, last night she started believing that I am her husband and started to get violently angry about it. Has any other sons or daughters of Alzheimer's patients had this problem? What did you do? It gets very awkward. She is on Namenda, Exelon Patch daily, and on mild amounts of Trazodone at bed time. Previously her Geriatric Psychiatrist has not wanted to give her anything for anxiety or depression. He gave me "smart food" vitamins to give her.
As my co-authored article site above entitled, Alzheimer's disease as a 'trip back in time' suggests when she time travels in her head back to your age time frame and you resemble her husband that where the mismatch occurs. As our article suggests they time travel revisiting earlier stages of their life. So that family members who are younger who resemble another family member become that member for the person with dementia. This phenomena also explains why you see AD persons talking to the mirror in their bathrooms. When they are 83 and time travel in their heads back to age 23 and look in the mirror they wonder who is this old woman in my bathroom mirror and talk to the woman. Does this make sense?
Just try to imagine how you would react if your wife and everyone else in your life suddenly told you that your wife was actually your daughter and not your wife and to top it off there was a strange man in your house who everyone said was your wife's real husband.
Trying to correct her if she has dementia or ALZ won't help and just frustrate her.
It's creepy, but not uncommon.
Watch out dementia may be catching!!!!!!!!!!!!! or have you been sampling that wine?
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