When my mom who is 83 looks at photos on the wall they wave and smile at her. So therefore she thinks they are real. A store that we shop at frequently and she enjoys because they have big poster people. There is a man in a picture that she thinks she has known for years and she really likes him. She thinks that he really likes her and she wants a relationship with him. She waves at him and talks to him and tells me how nice he is. I just do not know what to do.It is just so bizarre. I try not to go there but she gets upset if we don't. She thinks I am trying to keep her from having friends. This person is not real and does not exist except in her mind. She does not believe that he is not real and just a picture. Does anyone have any suggestions or have similar delusional experiences?
In our bathroom was a large mirror on the wall across from the toilet. The door opened inward and toilet was on same side of wall as the door as well as the sink, all facing that mirror, the shower/tub was long ways fitting between the two walls, so if you walked in the door you faced the shower tub, mirror to the left and toilet sink to the right. So if you were sitting on the bowl LOL you were facing the mirror. The details of the layout are relevant so you can picture this fully....
So every time Mom had to get into shower she'd say 'but someones going to come in the other door". My reaction, in thought and never vocally was, ""why does everything have to be a drama, just get undressed and get your butt in the shower"" So.... Every shower-time ....I had to say "no one's coming in here it's safe yada yada yada I'm here blah, blah 'blah"...... as I'm standing in the doorway ready to leave at the same time also having to make sure she doesn't forget why she's in the bathroom and making sure she's undressing, then needing to take her dirty close out so she does not put them back on. LOL . Imagine this production.
The entire time she's thinking about the other door that someone can come in. Me saying "what door, there's one door, see, see, see." I felt like the girls on Let's make a deal showing the features and functions of the bathroom in it's entirety.
Then one day it hit me.... she saw the reflection and she saw two doors!!!!!
Do you see the point that I'm trying to make? Sometimes you may not understand what a person see's from their prospective. It maybe just a problem with communication or just how a person's point of view is at a different focal point than yours.
Most of the time I now can understand.... three years later.... that Mom makes some sense even if it is delusional ....If I listen with patience and understanding there's reality in there somewhere or she's trying to tell me things she does not know how to express the way she was able to, prior to her Dementia..
Anyway..... one day my friend and her husband came into the house and heard Mom yelling, no one else lived with the three of them. So my friend heard her yelling loudly "Get out I'm calling the Police, If you come any closer!" ..."I'm warning you get out of here!" She was standing in front of a painting at the end of a hallway. The painting was one that was there in that spot forever, her son painted it along time ago. The art work was of a girl standing in a field alone in a distance, the girl was facing head up as if she were looking right at you. So Mom was slamming her walker in anger and persistence saying "Get out I'm calling the Police, If you come any closer!" ..."I'm warning you get out of here!" repeatedly!!!
My friend saw her doing this and just had to laugh, said to her husband you gotta see what she's doing..... To tell you the truth I have no idea how they got her to stop, but we still laugh about it. OH.... I think they took the picture off the wall.
This may seem to be not so humorous stuff, scary, mind boggling and plain crazy, but, it is real to the person seeing these things. It only angers them if you try to convince them that what they see isn't what you see.