My mother does not understand why she has to have psychological testing done because she is experiencing memory loss. Any advice?

I told my mom who was 87 at the time that we needed to get a baseline measurement in case she developed any memory or thinking issues at a later date.

I don't think I would refer to it as psychological testing, just an assessment of her problem solving skills.

We told my Mom that you need to know what kind of memory loss it is so that you can treat it most effectively. Now, I will say she still has good comprehension, so she can understand this reasoning. She is sick of all the appointments, though, that are needed to get a complete analysis of what is going on.

My poor mother didn't opt for any kind of baseline screening when it was "offered". Now she is really starting to show signs of dementia and is struggling and we have no "baseline" to refer to. Some of the sibs think she's doing "just fine" those of us in the know, know it's not true.

Yesterday, mother asked me "What is wrong with me? Why can't I remember anything?" I just felt so bad for her, in truth, I don't think it's helpful for the patient, as much as it helps the family/caregivers to assess the changes.

Nothing medical can be done for mother, she's just wearing out.

Midkid, years after her stroke, my mom would say, in her limited aphasic way "what's wrong with me?" I'd tell her she'd had a stroke; it was news to her every time, and it seemed to be a comfort to her, that there was a " reason".

Getting that baseline measure showed she had Mild Cognitive Impairment. It was what finally shut down my brother saying " mom is making herself anxious!". Um, no.

Mthr was a very proud intellectual, and we told her that we had to take her to a specialist who was studying gifted elderly and needed to test her IQ. This was court ordered testing to determine her competency, but because *we* were pursuing guardianship instead of the state (who called us in), the judge had us pay using private pay, uninsured rates. The psych was shocked that he had done that, so he wanted to give us our money's worth, including intelligence testing.

Surprise, similar story here. My mom, who loved tests, had taken some of the Neuro cog battery as part of the norming group, 25 years earlier. She remarked that she STILL mislabelled one of the animals as a platypus!

I told my mom that she hadn’t seemed to be ‘herself’ lately and we wanted a doctor to check her out. She knew something was wrong with her so she agreed.

She was mad later at me for a while but seems to have forgiven me. I hope!

She said people sure liked to talk in that hospital!