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I posted a question recently regarding mom's dementia/hallucinations, and I thank all of you who responded.


We just tried reducing her Sinemet (for Parkinson's), and even increased both her Aricept and Seroquel medications. However, nothing seems to be working.


My question this time is why would mom fixate on just one person in her hallucinations ? She sees the grand-kids of one of the employees at her Assisted Living Facility all the time, harassing her, and these kids even locked her in the bathroom. Again, no one is sure why mom or what mom has against this one employee.


Mom still sees men coming in her room to rob her on some nights.


I am afraid that the time to move mom to a Memory Care Facility is approaching.


Is fixation normal ?


Thank-you.


-terry

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Sorry, posted twice by mistake. Bad reflexes creeping up everywhere!
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One guess is that it is pure co-incidence. Your mother thought about the children once, and that idea keeps recirculating in her mind. How difficult for everyone!
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Terry - hallucinations are kinda a hallmark of Lewy Body Dementia. My mom had Lewy .... the flat shuffling walk, visual distortions, hallucinations and repetitive false beliefs yet their still pretty competent on their ADLs & cognitive. The medications for Lewy are different than for Alzheimer’s. Like Exelon (pill then the patch) rather than Aricept. Seroquel was off the list as I was told it makes things worse for LBD. Alot of the first line go-to psych meds should never ever be given to a Lewy patient.

Lewy Also tends to have lots of crossover symptoms to what Parkinson related dementia has. Similar part of the brain.

For my mom, we were fortunate that she had her evaluation done within a gerontology dept at a health science center so the testing done could be more precise to determining which dementia type and what stage. But what I’ve found is that most docs in the US just default to its Alzheimer and do the Alz drug list. If you can, Google “Lewy” and read up to see of your mom seems to match up to Lewy symptoms. Most of the articles will be from the UK. Lewy is the 2nd most common type of dementia & it’s management in the early & mid stages is different than for Alz.

Now convincing her MD to look beyond Alz and the Alz drugs he’s gotten from the pharmaceutical reps mights be tricky.....
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terrymf Sep 2018
Hello Igloo572

THANK-YOU so much for all this information. Mom was diagnosed by her Neurologist as having Lewy Body Dementia.
I will look into Exelon.
And you are correct, mom is pretty much competent. All her problems usually occur at night.
But from what you stated, it seems like there is no "fix" for mom's hallucinations. Sigh !!
-terry
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My mother had so many hallucinations I couldn’t keep up with them. However, there were a few she hung on to the entire time she was in the nursing home. We tried so many different meds and combinations of meds, we finally decided just to put her on anti-anxiety and antidepressants and that was all. You can’t make them go away and you can’t explain them to yourself or anyone else. The most persistent one my mom had was that she thought an ancient old guy in a wheelchair was a kid on a bike. The hallway outside her room was a “street” and this “kid” was stalking her. Men were always “stalking” her. To this day, I don’t know where that came from.
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terrymf Sep 2018
Hello Ahmijoy

Thank-you once again for your response and for the helpful information.

I guess this is a part of mom's life that I have to accept for her.
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