My mother, at 89, saw a team of neurologist, psychiatric nurse practitioner and neuropsychologist as part of a work-up of her cognitive skills. They diagnosed Mild Cognitive Impairment at that time, uncovered the fact that my mother had had a previously undiagnosed stroke and should no longer live alone (we had moved her into Independent Living 6 months before this when her anxieties about EVERYTHING made it impossible for us to work and live normal lives.
This evaluation was very much the brain child of the geriatric psychiatrist who visited my mother at her facility for medical/medication management of her anxiety. While I knew that my mother's thinking skills were no longer what they had been, I didn't realize that there had been a quantifiable decline and the rest of the family kept insisting that she was "sharp as a tack" and was causing the anxiety willfully. The extensive testing, both physical and paper and pencil, told a very different story and helped us all to understand better what was going on.
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This evaluation was very much the brain child of the geriatric psychiatrist who visited my mother at her facility for medical/medication management of her anxiety. While I knew that my mother's thinking skills were no longer what they had been, I didn't realize that there had been a quantifiable decline and the rest of the family kept insisting that she was "sharp as a tack" and was causing the anxiety willfully. The extensive testing, both physical and paper and pencil, told a very different story and helped us all to understand better what was going on.
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