Early stage dementia with anger issues and lying. What do I do about my mother who has lied to everyone about an incident that took place?

You NEVER leave someone with dementia to navigate anywhere particularly a large busy hospital.
You NEVER argue with someone that has dementia. The argument will not go anywhere, will not solve any problems. You change the subject. You ignore what is being said. You wear headphones, earbuds or ear plugs if you have to.
She is not lying....this is the truth as she sees it, as she remembers it. Her truth may not be based in reality.
With the health problems you list for yourself you might want to consider looking into either full day caregivers that can help you out including going with mom to doctor appointments. Or begin the thought process that Memory Care is a viable, safe option for you as well as mom.

Let someone else be her chauffeur you need a break. Don't defend yourself. It was just a very bad day. I believe you. We all have them.

I'm going to be kind of blunt.   First, avoid the topics that cause friction.  Change the subject, talk about the weather.   But don't "engage".

Second, I have a lot of sympathy for your mother and how she interpreted the situation.    Regardless of her advice not to accompany her, recognize that she was annoyed and perhaps retaliating against you.   This is merely an observation, but I think sometimes people grow to rely on frictional relationships as part of their daily life.  Absent that, and they are forced to reassess, which she may not have been able to do.

Notwithstanding, we caregivers sometimes or often experience hostility,  and in my opinion, it's best to let the issue drop as quickly as possible, especially with someone who's not able to think clearly.  Nothing positive will come of debating the issue.

I think that either she felt abandoned and probably panicked, or she was in fact retaliating against you.    If she did perceive she was abandoned, that's a frightening situation for anyone, especially an elder person.   Given her lack of mental clarity, it may not have occurred to her to just walk outside and locate your car.

I don't blame you for feeling offended, and I'm sure that mischaracterization of the situation is concerning.   I would reach out to "everyone" she contacted and explain the situation, assuming you value their opinion.    And emphasize that your mother sometimes gets facts confused, but don't attempt to elevate the blame against her.    She (and you) already have enough to deal with.

From your profile page: "I am caring for my mother Georgia , who is 73 years old, living at home with alzheimer's / dementia, anxiety, arthritis, depression, incontinence, mobility problems, and sleep disorder."

and

" I have always known I would have to take care of mom."

Where is your mother living? Is she living in your home? What kind of caregiving does she require, and do you do it all?

Why have you always known you would have to be caregiver?

You're looking at this regrettable incident as though your mother is deliberately slandering you. She isn't. She had a bad experience and she believes her own interpretation of what took place.

What took place is that you had a stressful dispute on the way there, you - quite naturally, I don't blame you for a second - vented by threatening her with having to make her own way home (with no intention of doing that, and presumably you didn't even hand her the $20 fare either), and with that emotional cloud hanging over her she emerged from her appointment with negative expectations and went on to fulfil them. That's what she remembers. It was a silly misunderstanding, that's ALL it was, and you can say so to anyone it may concern, including your DIL. Don't let this get out of proportion.

You were miffed. Got it. Been there, done that.
However, dementia means never leaving them to navigate a place alone. Her brain is DYING.
She didn't want you to be in the appointment with her? Fine. You wait in the waiting room or at the door for her to be done.
You don't expect her to remember where you parked...her short term memory doesn't exist in the same way as a normal person's. She will remember emotion and not reason. She will have a flash of what you said in the heat of the argument and that will be the reality of her memory.

It’s hard.. my mom throws me under the bus whenever she can. Looking for sympathy. My husband… treats him like a king. He doesn’t see it .
Recently moved my mom from another state. Family had a send off gathering, while I was hard at working packing up. I went to pick my mom up , mind you , I hadn’t seen my cousins and second cousins since pre covid. When I entered , not a single person said hello.I can just imagine the tales my mom had regarding the stresses of moving her.

yes unfortunately, the choice to wait in the car was hers. She didn’t want you to go in. As our parents age, they think they have more capabilities than they have. I hope you corrected your mother s assumption to her. My mom does the same manipulation. Passive aggressive. My mom did it to my sister who is now passed. I am now the black sheep of our family. Try to forgive and move on…

It's a miracle your mom was able to find her way home, walking 1.7 miles alone to do so!

You have to learn all about dementia, unfortunately, to understand what transpired on that day your mom had a doctor's appointment. You can explain something 1000x to an elder with dementia, but they'll hear and believe what they WANT to hear and believe. Then you can't chop that idea out of their head with an axe. It's part and parcel of the condition OF dementia. It's what makes dementia so unreasonable and so darn hard to deal with.

Your mom is not 'lying' in her reality; she's telling the story as she sees it. She came out of her appointment (probably from a different exit door) and you weren't there, so she had no other choice but to walk home. In her mind, you abandoned her and that story will STAY in her mind forever and a day.

So, if you are mom's POA and she doesn't want you going in with her to the doctor's appointment, you say ok. You then park the car and follow her into the doctor's office ANYWAY. Or now you allow the DIL to take her to the appointments, but if she's not the POA, she cannot accompany mom into the actual office for the exam.

If you are the POA and want to accompany mom on her future appointments, you may want to apologize for the confusion and explain to her what happened. Not that she will understand it or sway from her story at all. Who knows?

You say, "she has a dog but talks to all these service guys or what they say they are and she believes everything they say it is just getting to be too much and i am only one who can help her." The best thing you can do is to learn all you can about dementia & how it presents itself so you can help your mom to the best of your ability rather than continue to get upset and overwhelmed at what's happening to her. Many elders don't believe they have dementia but they DO, so extra care has to be taken with them so they don't get hurt or lost, etc.

Go to Alz.org to learn all you can about dementia and what to expect. Watch some Teepa Snow videos on YouTube as well; she is very informative and entertaining to watch, too.

Wishing you the best of luck with a tough situation.

I'm probably going to catch hell here but I'm speaking from experience.
Many elders with early dementia are well off enough to understand and remember easy and simple instructions like the ones you gave your mother on the day you brought her to the doctor.

She was trying to instigate a fight or make some trouble with you on the way to the doctor's appointment. You stood up for yourself but this wasn't the response she wanted.
I believe what she wanted was a fight so she could engage in a bit of verbal abuse with you. Then she wants to play the poor victim a bit because you hurt her feelings. When finally you arrive at the doctor, she wants you to beg her forgiveness and insist that she let you go in with her to the appointment because of how sorry you are for not doing anything. If she was able to call several people and repeat the same story to them about what a horrible person you are and keep all the details straight to match them up with each telling, then her dementia isn't as advanced as you might have thought. If she was able to find her way home 1.7 miles then her health and dementia isn't so bad.
Get her a home/health aide please. For your own sake. Then make sure all the doctor's appointments are made during her aide's working hours.

I know it is infuriating, but, believe me, other people realize what the truth is. When my husband first started getting dementia, he accused me of telling his friends that he was going crazy. His friends, of course, without my saying anything, knew what his problem was, and were very caring and sympathetic about my position. If you think your sister-in-law thinks you are at fault, just wait. Your mother will do something similar to your sister-in-law and she will understand. However, you must realize that there is no guarantee what a dementia patient will remember, so you should have waited for her in the doctor's waiting room, or where you could see her walk out the door. Unfortunately, you have more lessons coming and you will be the one who has to learn.

To us they are lying. To them they are stating the God’s honest truth as they remember it.

My dad tells people I don’t visit and he hasn’t seen me in five years. I’ll admit that I get defensive at that. So I take a breath, remind myself he’s not in a right mind and reply with something like, “We went to lunch last week. The food was so bad I try to forget about it, too!”

He also tells the doctor he hasn’t fallen before, that he hasn’t called to change his insurance, and he doesn’t know why they keep mailing him pills/supplements.

In the first place, i know it isn't easy for you, but... you should NEVER argue with a person who has dementia. You will never win and it only makes things worse as you just said. Best thing to do is change the subject to something more pleasant. Don't expect her to remember where you are parked. She probably forgot you even said you'd be waiting for her, so she called someone for help. Insist you go with her to see the Dr even if she didn't like it. You need to know what is going on with her. I highly think her dementia has progressed and you think she's still in early stages.
What you're not understanding is that people with dementia sometimes if not most of the time act like children. They have to be guided and treated as such.
Like it or not, you're the person that's suppose to be in charge so play the part.
Think of her as someone who needs your help and guidance. Stop arguing Auth her. If you can't do that, then it's time to call for caregiver help. Good luck to you.

I’m not a professional, but I know from experience with my grandmother, that sometimes the resistance you receive as a caregiver can be them just trying to retain any small semblance of control of their own lives. Imagine being told you must shower every night, when your caregiver says. That even though cooking is your life’s focus and your best show of love, you can no longer help make dinner because your caregiver thinks you are unsafe with a knife (and your brain still tells you you definitely aren’t). You aren’t given the choice in a lot of matters. And to top it, your adult privileges like getting to drive are taken away. It’s for their safety, of course, but if your mother refuses to believe she has dementia, and people treat her as if she does indeed have dementia, she may be annoyed and offended. I know I would be.
Dont let a person with dementia navigate places alone. She may have been adamant that you not attend her appt, but maybe you “just need to use the restroom”, and so you follow a couple steps behind her. Close enough to lunge and grab her if she walks in front of a vehicle, but just far enough she doesn’t feel constantly supervised. Search for that bathroom all the way to the receptionist. If you’re concerned about what she may tell (or not tell) the doctor in your absence, give the office a call and let them know she’s insisting on going alone, but here are your concerns.

She probably didn't see you and thought you left.
You should have had her call you when she got out of the Dr's Office.

Let the daughter in law take mom to the Dr's appointments if she wants.
Just inform everyone that you were there and I'm sure they'll believe you.

She doesn't remember the details of your conversation, so she is "filling in the blanks." If she tended to be a dramatic personality and "embellished" the facts in the past, then this is probably not really new. You can tell others the true story out of your mother's hearing.

It might be a good idea to rethink how running those errands is going to happen from now on. It appears you will have to accompany her into every appointment and have her right with you for every errand.

In my experience with dementia, it does not surprise me that a person with dementia would forget where the car was parked, but knew how to walk 1.7 miles to her house. That is what is so frustrating and bewildering for the dementia sufferer and for the caretaker. You and they never know what they will forget and when.

angela1973: Imho, this could have been my mother also. Sometimes elders get fixated on the wrong intel, e.g. even though they were told new information, they are going to "go with" what they had heard previously. In this case, sadly, your mother may have been so focused on the $20 that she NEVER LISTENED to you after that. Just a thought. This, too, was my mother.

angela1973: Additionally, perhaps your mother's dementia is not that bad, else how could even the most fit individual walk 1.7 miles? That seems incredible unless your mother is a very fit woman.

As the person on the receiving end of my mother’s lying and bad mouthing for many many years, I know how difficult and painful this can be. But that was always my mother - a negative, abusive miserable person who blamed everyone and everything for her own life failures. Even in her advanced dementia, my mother still manipulates the truth to gain sympathy and hurt others. Only it’s so outrageous now, she is almost never taken seriously.

I don’t know what your mother was like before her diagnosis of dementia. You say you two got “into it” on the ride over to the hospital. I don’t know if you two have a long history of getting into it.

Despite the diagnosis of dementia, it is still okay to speak firmly, calmly and concretely with your mother, setting some boundaries. You cannot argue or try to reason with her because you will set your self up for a round and round argument that will go nowhere and only lead to frustration.

My mother’s dementia went undiagnosed for many years and there was a lot of damage done. She fooled a lot of people too.

Right now it might be a good time to let someone else take her to her appointments. Taking a break will be good for you (and her) and it doesn’t mean you are a bad daughter. If it had been me in your situation at one point in time, I might have actually handed her the 20 bucks and let her take a taxi home! You don’t owe anyone an explanation. Just that “with mom’s dementia, I seem to trigger a negative response that’s unhealthy for both of us so it’s best if someone else steps in.” Take care of yourself please!

Mepowers is spot on! I would encourage you to try not to beat yourself up over it. Just evaluate what happened and what you could have done differently and act on it, such as, don’t allow her to go in to appointments on her own; don’t take for granted that she will remember anything you tell her or any directions that you give her; don’t allow her to draw you into a squabble, etc. 

As for your mother lying about the incident, she’s likely telling others her version of reality. If she has a history of enjoying drama or attention, she will play it up and sacrifice you in the process. To family members who aren’t involved with her care, she can appear fully functional and believable.

I know this firsthand as my mom has pretty much destroyed any close relationship I have with my family with this kind of behavior, and I’m her only caregiver. Her dementia has finally progressed to where it’s evident to everyone, but she did all that damage in the years (yes, years) leading up to the stage of dementia where she can no longer hide it.

Anosagnosia…. In HER reality , that is what happened . By the time she was finished with her appointment, she forgot what you told her .. It might be time to accompany her to her appointments. I had to think about the anger with my husband early on with the dementia. It came to me how I would feel if I started to loose myself and how frustrating it would be . I came to understand that when he was giving ME a hard time it was because HE was having a hard time , too . My best suggestion is to find yourself a CareTakers Meeting. Contact Alzheimers Association and they will help you find one . Very sad to say , this is just the beginning. Her reality will never be the same . I hit a brick wall about 2 years in and wish I found a meeting much earlier on . Best you know where her journey will take the both of you .. Prayers are with you and you are not alone .