I went to see my mother Tues. She will be 95 July 13. She is in hospice care now in the nursing home. She has gotten into a hallucinatory state. Tues I took her outside to sit in the warm sun and she kept seeing cockroaches all over. Told me they keep falling all apart and that they can do it to themself noone does it to them and when they make themself fall apart like that it makes that animal mad so he eats them all. Then she kept reaching in the air and grabbing things. Finally told me Oh look a little elephant I love my little elephant. (she does love elephants and has a large collection of ceramic and marble carved elephants at home)
Wed. the nursing home called and told me they were going to give Mom an adovan (anti-psychotic) as she was really delirious and very agitated and was in my daughter-in-laws office. (Both my son and his wife work in the home) So I went up to see what was going on. Mom said she was mad at me vecause I had been writing bad checks all over town. (she now has an obsession with her check book) I assured her that I had not written any bad checks, then she kind of giggled and said Oh I know you haven't.
It was lunch time so I decided to take her to the dining room and help her eat. I took her in at 11:30 and she didn't get any food til 12:15. But it was unreal as that whole 45 min. we waited she ate imaginary food. The pantomime was so good you would swear she was really eating. At first she picked something up in her hand and actually "bit" it off and chewed and chewed then kept licking whatever she thought she was eating off her fingers. Then she picked up a fork and she ate and ate and ate. Chewed like she really had something in her mouth swallowed it and even picked some food out of her teeth. It was so bizarre and so heartbreaking to see my mother behaving like this. Finally her food came and a CNA came over to help me and Mom was still "feeding" herself so every time she would open her mouth to eat her imaginary food as she was bringing her hand to her mouth the CNA would hurry up and put a spoonful of soup in Moms mouth. In doing so she managed to get a half bowl of chicken noodle soup into mom then they brought her some pureed peaches and she got that all down mom. By this time the adovan was kicking in and mom was falling alseep so the CNA took her back to her room and put her to bed.
It was a horrible thing to see my Mom like this and I don't think I will ever eat another meal that I don't see my mom eating like that when there was nothing there.
I guess I would think of it this way, Delphine, that your Mom is leading an intersting life in her hallucingenic state - as long as caretakers keep her safe, it's just the mind having fun with all the disassociated memories and images as the brain ages. Dad often talked about his halluciations towards the end. Mind you, he didn't have dementia of any sort, but his Parkinson's meds brought them on. So he was in a strange position of talking fairly objectively about his visions, sometimes even WHILE they were happening. I was with him at least once when he could describe them to me. He knew they weren't there, but then we started talking about what being there really meant, and decided who is to say what is there and what's not, and what it all might mean. Now THAT's my Dad, *chuckle*, always liking a good discussion...
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