My mom refuses to seek medical help of any kind. She opposes everything. How can I get her treatment for her undiagnosed Alzheimer's?

Thank you, Joann, for illustrating the other side. My mother died as a direct result of her self-neglect. Mom was competent (on paper). Mom had an outdated POA (relative who lives in another state and hadn’t been to Mom’s house in 10 years).

I am Mom’s only child, and she would flip the F out on me whenever I tried to address her dire need for medical care. Mom had the best health insurance I’ve ever seen; a generous LTC policy; owned residential & commercial properties (all paid off); money in the bank. Mom thumbed her nose at all of her many, many resources.

Throughout, there was no shortage of well-meaning(?) people would tut and click and tell me - sigh - that I needed to step up. If Dante is looking to add a 10th Circle Of Hell, this is it.

First let me say I’m a RN of 20+ years and I would never judge a family like that! Ridiculous!
Knowledge is power so here goes... hallucinations aren’t typical in dementia except for a certain type called Lewy body. There is also a dementia like condition that is curable. A shunt is placed to drain fluid from the brain. There are medications that can help delay the progression and help to manage the symptoms too.
So for these reasons alone explain to your dad that you want her to see a doctor. Preferably a neurologist that can diagnose and treat her dementia effectively.
Explain that you don’t want to take away his right to care for your mom in his home but that you insist that she get evaluated to ensure that she is getting all the help she needs for her condition.
Find resource materials and show him how medications like Aricept can help slow declines. She has symptoms that can overlap with a urinary tract infection too. That should be ruled out.
Ultimately if you are unable to get him to get her to a doctor I do believe you should call Adult Protective Services.
Explain to your dad that should he have another stroke and was not so fortunate to be ok after it, he would want to know that she was receiving the best care possible.
Hallucinations are often effectively treated with medications too. If something as simple as a doctors visit and a bottle or two of pills could improve the quality of both of their lives how could he refuse to get this help?
No one can force him into placing her elsewhere as long as he is caring for her. Reassure him that you have no intentions of putting her in a home, you just want to see her symptoms treated as best as they can be. He’s probably frightened that he will lose her. Reassuring him that he won’t but that he could be denying her help may get him to get her to a doctor.
Sorry, for the life of me I cannot recall the dementia type that is actually not dementia but cured with a shunt. I’ll think of it eventually.
He really owes it to her to get evaluated and the hallucinations need to be treated as they are very distressing to the sufferer.
All of my best!!

Is your mother willing to allow anyone into the house, perhaps represented as your or your sister’s visiting “friend”, actually a professional trained in diagnosis of geriatric cognitive functioning?
If so, a conversation with you and/or your sister and this professional trained in geriatric diagnosis might be able to begin the process of identifying cognitive weaknesses that could reveal Mom’s inability to continue to be safely managed at home without additional help for dad.
For the LO currently in my care, who was demonstrating some of the behaviors you are seeing in your mom, a gentle, sympathetic interview by a calm, quiet PA trained in geriatric care resulted in a successful trial of a medication, and subsequently the development of a letter which has been a helpful asset for getting her the best care available.
Although it is in my opinion, one of the most harrowing aspects of caring for a LO with dementia, at some point it will be absolutely necessary for the health and safety of both of your parents to “take over” the situation and have mom speak to some expert outside of your family, so that at the very least, dad is informed that mom is functioning so “differently” at present that she cannot safely continue without some supports outside of what the family is already doing.
All of the advice you are receiving here suggests different approaches to the same inevitable course, and yes, there will most certainly be negative consequences and anger and grieving, and for you and your sister, the grief and self doubt and remorse of whether or not you’re doing the “best” or right things for them both.
Ultimately, those of us who love and care for people who manifest difficult, negative behaviors ALWAYS are called upon at some point or another to make informed choices from a selection of options that we are aware will cause discomfort or unhappiness for our LO, but that MUST be made to keep our LO(s) safe, as comfortable as possible, and as comfortable as can be provided.
Unfortunately, you and your sister will be dealing with your mom’s behavior in terms of differential diagnosis to whatever extent possible, and at the same time your dad’s fragile physical condition and his denial of his wife’s present needs and the impact of those needs on his own health.
I think most of us would have to admit that we held off as long as we could, but looking back on my own family situation I have to realize that holding back didn’t make any of the process different than it came to be.
It DID help me early on to do some research about the different kinds of in-home support, residential care, and different reasons for dementia symptoms. Arm yourself this way if you can.

I was faced with the same issue. Plan a fun day with your mom. Take her out and remind her You NEED her. Make a doctor's appointment (fun day) and alert the staff of the situation. Have the staff to call your name and ask the doctor to check both of you. Good luck

No offense, but you and your siblings need to step up. Your mom clearly cannot make rational desisions for herself so why would you continue to let her do so? Your father cannot care for her any longer and quiet frankly shouldnt have been allowed to do so after his stroke as he needs to focus on caring for himself. I work in home health care and I literally just delt with a client with a situation identical to this. My client refused to eat or leave bed and would scream and hit at her daughter and husband (who was her sole caregiver)who was on hospice for lung cancer . Since she was so violent and upset 911 had to be called to safely remove her from their senior appartments. I was very upset with my clients family as she was clearly too advanced to be living at home still. With that being said, please don’t continue to neglect your parents heath because you are doing so when your father, who already has health concerns, needs to care for your mother, who needs professional help. Understand that your mom’s brain is not right and she cannot make the right decision for her health YOU need to take the wheel and do what is best for the health of BOTH of your parents. Step up.

Sometimes all you can do is respect them as your parents and wait. I'm so sorry you are having to deal with this. My dad never went to the doctor or dentist unless he was in severe pain. He is 89 and his teeth are broken and worn down. He says he's not in pain so I let it go. He'd have to have almost a full mouth of teeth pulled to get dentures and that would be hard on him. He did get to a neuro after a car accident and so now goes once a year. (He has TIA's and brain damage from the strokes). Medications that "slow the progression" of Alz have their own side affects. We tried them on dad, who took no prescription meds at all, and he got leg cramps and hallucenations so we stopped the medicine. Women in my Alz support group have tried the meds on their husbands too and saw no improvement. (one woman's husband said "I'd rather loose my mind than go out of it" after trying the meds) For what that's worth. Do what you can to help, what they will allow, and understand that they want control over their lives. I know you love them and that makes it hard to stand by and watch but sometimes that's all we can do. You need to control your stress level. This is a long haul disease. Don't burn yourself out early.

Well, the obstacle is your father.

I'm glad to hear that he recovered well from his stroke. What he needs to consider is what will happen to your mother if he has another. Which, as I'm sure you know, is a greater threat the more pressure he is under.

What is he afraid of? What does he think will happen if he accepts help, support and advice from outsiders? Perhaps if you can list some concrete proposals and outline the plan in more detail, it'll reassure him enough to get him started.

E.g. He could call his own doctor and take advice on how to get your mother examined.
You could download information from alz.org for caregivers.
You could point out to him that your mother is suffering terribly from what she is going through and she deserves treatment to help her.

Take it gently, and make positive suggestions rather than dwelling on everything that's going wrong. If you can win his co-operation that will be the key.

Btw, if your mother had severe Alzheimer's Disease she wouldn't be doing much. Clearly there is a lot wrong, but try to keep an open mind about what it is. Do you remember roughly when she started showing signs of there being a problem?

I got the doctors help getting my mom diagnosed with dementia. I told her the doctor wanted to see her for another reason. And she went. Good luck!
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Have her primary send her to neurologist then Dr can test her give her RX I told mom if she didn’t go something serious might happen it scared her it took me 2 yrs to get her to go but now she is slightly calmer which gives me a break even if it’s a small break from there we went to see a psychiatrist which really help Dr’s don’t like to diagnose patients who might have dementia/Alzheimer’s because it could be just old age and senility

music, it’s so good you found this site! This is such a hard situation, I’m sorry. You're doing so much, and you don’t love your next step but you’ll take it. Insurance likely covers nurse evals in-home, together with your dad figure out a trick to get the nurse in. - What doctor do you ask to order this?!.. does your dad have a doctor that may agree to become her doctor, even though she won’t come in? Some doctors still do house visits. There are also senior care managers, maybe find recommendations for ones near you and ask one how to get the order for a nurse visit.

This site isn’t exactly an in-person support group but it’s pretty close, please keep coming back! Good luck. 🙏