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PVL1955 Asked April 2015

My Mom finally consented to see a doctor for memory problems, but is now being combative. Any advice?

After a year of doing all I could to get my mother to see a doctor for memory loss, she finally made the appointment. After a private discussion with her primary care physician last summer, he would do nothing until she made the appointment on her own. Now that we are in the middle of the dr. appointments and testing process... she's taken the written test at the Primary's office, he ordered an MRI and now we are waiting to get into the Neurologist, she is threatening to cancel her remaining appointment. She is fighting tooth and nail every other day to call the appointment with the Neurologist off. She got furious when she saw that the reason listed on her appointment paper for the Neurologist states "memory loss" as the reason she is seeing him. She's completely in denial now of making the original appointment to her Primary herself for "memory loss." These tests and doctor appointments are making her more and more out of control lately, and since we have 6 weeks yet till the Neurologist appointment, my concern is that she is going to cancel. For example, just yesterday in a fit over a cell phone bill, she canceled her phone because "she had not used it in a month and therefore is convinced she does not need it. The real problem was that she had gotten a new cell phone and was convinced it was broken because she kept getting this message when calling a friend..."the person you are calling doesn't have a voice mail account activated" and neither my father or I could convince her that this had nothing to do with her phone. When the bill came yesterday, she flipped and canceled it. She's had a cell phone for years, so this behavior towards the cell phone was really out of character and in my opinion, an example of what I might expect in the next 6 weeks as this appointment that she is furious over gets closer. What do I do?

PVL1955 Apr 2015
Windyridge, Mom is 83 and I am not fighting her over dementia, she is fighting me over going through the diagnosis process with the doctors, now that I got her to make the appointment and actually got her to go see her Primary. I do not bring any of it up to her at all, because I have become convinced she knows on some level, conscious or sub-consciously that she's got memory issues, and is in great fear right now. And I know she fears Alzheimer's the most from comments she's made the past year to me. My main problem with her is that every few days as the appointment with the Neurologist gets closer, she gets furious with the whole process and that is what she is fighting and threatening to discontinue...finding out what is wrong with her. Please understand, I have researched dementia for the past year now and followed this forum for most of that year as I waited and prayed for the opportunity to finally get Mom to agree to see her Primary Care physician. I absolutely know that she has dementia at the very least, or Alzheimers at the very worst. And due to all the wisdom and advice shared here, have benefited greatly in understanding how to advance this far with Mom, but now that I have got her to the doctor, I was not anticipating these problems and had not so far read anything on here similar to my current problems with her.

PVL1955 Apr 2015
She's already on anti-anxiety meds....thanks so much for the suggestion!! And yes, I have been going out of my way not to mention the up coming appointment with the neurologist. I forgot to mention that she mentioned it to friends and they also got her all stirred up as they did not like this neurologist when they saw him. They called him a "head shrink" and I had a very difficult time convincing her he is not a psychiatrist. One of these friends also having the same problems as Mom and going to same docs...the friend of my mother's is also fighting her diagnosis...obviously!

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Windyridge Apr 2015
You don't say how old mom is but it sounds like classic dementia. You will never be able to reason with her over her memory issue. There are different causes of dementia and many of the symptoms and effects are similar. I would not continue world war three over her tests and appointments. Use this site to learn how to deal with her dementia. It many cases the exact diagnosis doesn't really change how you have to treat the behavior.

Eyerishlass Apr 2015
Get your mom on some anti-anxiety medication and don't mention the appointment if you can help it.

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