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How much is dementia and her response to life?

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It seems that dementia causes the negatives to expand and become more obvious. Your mother's doctor needs to diagnose dementia, so that she can get appropriate care. But yes, they can get vicious.
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Only you know if she has always been that way. Stop and think about how she handled stress or perceived stress when you were growing up.

Dementia will cause people to become difficult to deal with. They will accuse you of things you have no intentions toward. Their logic is all mixed up, paranoia is very common and delusions.

Her response to life...what was it like 30 years ago...did she feel she was a always being screwed over...if so dementia can cause that to become worse. My mother got where she believed the government was out to kill off all elderly people.

I was able to gain my mother's trust by becoming more understanding and looking at her fears and anxiety as her normal behavior. I started treating it as dementia only. This can work but it depends on your relationship with mother going back to the past. I was close with my mom even though she was accusatory, negative and paranoid. As the dementia progressed, I started telling her I understood, I lose things too, forget where I put things....normal...I did not want her to feel there was something wrong with her because denial is a big part of dementia.
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Just a thought: what about asking a neurologist to talk you through her MRI? Unless you have reason to know better, it could be that specific areas of brain loss or injury are having a terrible effect on her.
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Somebody told me that dementia will make the person MORE of who they are.
I really hope that when it's my turn, I'm the one calling everybody sweetie and saying things that make people smile or at least think I'm harmless. Hopefully I can flirt with the guys and tell the women they are all pretty. I saw a lady like this when my mom was in a less secure memory care unit. She was so sweet.
And then there's my mom...*ahem*

This site is FULL of people asking the same question as you. Apparently there is a generation or two of narcissists out there who are now old enough to have dementia.

Strokes can cause drastic personality changes.

Urinary tract infections can cause dementia like behaviors that may present as ugly. So can medication conflicts and side effects.

How recently was your mother diagnosed and about what stage is she in?
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