My mother has Alzheimer's. She has severe memory loss. When she took the test that the Neurologist does for memory she recieved a zero. She is also on memantine, which is one of three drugs offered, mainly for severe patients. She hasn't been through the normal stages. She started off getting a little confused and my father thought it was just menopause. She never gets angry. Then one day her speach wasn't as great. She couldn't hold a conversation as well and mostly listen (but she is and always will be an introvert. My father was the one who always leads conversations and she listened to everyone.) She would leave in the car and get lost. Then she would walk once we took the car away. Finally the fleeing stopped and she didn't open a door by herself anymore. Then she forgot how to bring herself to the bathroom. This was over about 10 years.
She is still very fit and loves to go for walks. She prefers to speak with the mirror then any other activity. If she knows she's alone she speaks at a normal conversation level but if someone is in the room her voice gets softer and lowers sometimes to a whisper. She comforts the "person in the mirror" and asks "her" to follow her when she goes into other rooms. She now refers to herself as "we" not to exclude her "mirror friend." In most cases that I've read about the patient is bothered or angered by the mirror but my mother loves the mirror. I'm just trying to understand this situation better. I even bought her more mirrors. I'm wondering if she has made friends with this person because everyone was gone? I had move to SC and my dad still works to this day. I moved back to take care of her full time. Maybe she felt lonely and created a friend? Is this possible for someone with such severe memory loss? She baffles me some days. I was just wondering if anyone has experienced the same thing?
My mother is diagnosed with Dementia and is in a nursing facility. There is a full length mirror in her room and she frequently talks to her reflection. At times she does this when other people are in the room. She attempts to introduce her visitors to the person that is her reflection. She did start talking to the mirror months before she went into the nursing home.
Laughing & happy, so excited to see her, even trying to “get inside” the mirror to be with her.
In my experience, my mother was relieved to see a person she recognized and it brought her lots of security in an often lost & confusing world.
My only warning would be to say, if she is looking in a full length mirror then make sure it is secured well to the wall.
I once found my mother trying to pull a big heavy mirror down off the wall to get to her friend.
And once in the evening we were on a train and she recognized her own face out of many in the reflection of the window.
”oh hellooo, how are you! “She said with a beaming smile and then she turned to me and told me that she knew her. :)
As far as I was concerned, we should have given this unit, full of sad, lonely people, isolated by "caretakers" and locked unit doors, Christmas every day. Take your choice of holiday. Birthdays can be celebrated any day in the year, over and over. When the patient is that "disoriented" then why not let them live in a happy reality?
A dear, ancient little lady lay surrounded by a crowded room in what used to be called a hospital "ward". It was especially set aside for people that didn't have enough money to afford privacy - and so much more. The "women's lavatory" was a long room like you'd see at a trailer camp. No doors on the stalls. If you got up to go use it you'd have to step over wires from medical equipment and IV's. - A nightmare.
But back to this 100 year old angel. She had a sort of four-poster metal bed and saw kittens; millions of kittens all over the bed, lounging on the metal bars and plopping down onto her coverlet. My fellow co-workers, each in their turn, spent shift time straining to make her understand that she was seeing things and that there were no kittens. I finally got my time with her and I'll never forget the joy she experienced before her happy, peaceful death. "Look! See that fluffy white one!" the memory of her delighted laughter will always remain with me.
Forget trying to analyze or diagnose this behavior. Go to the Dollar Tree and buy gazillions of mirrors and plaster them everyplace. What price happiness? Substitute your mother's declining state of reality with the joy she's been blessed enough to supplant it with.
my question is ... she has a friend ... someone to confide in that understands her ... shes not alone.
Thats bad how ???