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So my mother has been getting more consistent in the type of memory slips she is having and I was wondering if anyone here might recognize the pattern as indicating early Alzheimer's or something else. Just today she said to me didn't you have a dog that used to do this certain trick? And I reminded her that it was actually a dog she used to have that did that. Then she said oh yeah, that was Spot....but actually Spot lived twenty years after Bucky who was the one who did the trick. So she'll think a memory of hers is actually something that happened to me. Sometimes she'll claim a memory from my life as something that happened to her. And then mix up the time period, person or pet, the memory actually was attached to. She'll also remember all the details of a grocery item she buys all the time except it's name. Like she'll say you know those potato chips that are the jalapeno flavor and I'll have to help her remember it is Mrs. Vick's brand but she buys them every week. She's hopefully going to be evaluated by a neurologist for memory issues soon, but in the meantime do any of you have any insight?

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My MIL does the same story mix ups constantly! Been living here three yrs now and not sure which version is even the right one, anymore! She grew up next door to William Allen White in Emporia but the old stories are changed to suit whoever is being talked about. She's inserted Harry Truman and now Sam Walton into whatever decade sounds convincing, to impress people. Her life gets more GRAND by the day! I think it is delusions. However she has had 60 yrs of practice covering up her mental illness with her intellectual rantings. It amazes me how people fall for her line of bull. Takes a year before they start to catch on! LOL.
I keep threatening to write a book. Insert her in the life of every historically important person in the midwest, during her lifetime! Sort of like Forest Gump...
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Thanks Jeanne - I have things in the works so maybe in a few weeks I'll know more.

Captain....see once shit gets That real my decisions will be pretty clear - hard and difficult but not confusing like it is now. My hat is off to you, keep your livaaaaar safe.
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I too hope that she can be evaluated soon, so you'll have a better idea of what you are dealing with.
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aaaaarrr!!
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oh well, spot, jizz stain, those things arent worthy of recollection. when mom looks at you and says you are an imposter and not her son or daughter at all then shit is getting real.. i had to don my bandanna saturday just to stop mom from throwing water on me and dragging me thru the house by my beard. fyi, she never pulled my beard very hard, she knows shes nuts and just having some uninhibited fun with it.. BUT, i stashed the knives. lol.. the hor iz nuts iz what im sayin.. i can take a joke but not a filet blade to the livaaaar !!
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Capnhardass, you are always concise enough! My mother's been lying like a rug for some time to try to cover up her slips but I think it is getting harder for her. A person who didn't know her well wouldn't be able to tell she had an issue.

Perseverance, I know....that is why I so much want her to get on the drugs that might slow the decline some but first she has to allow evaluation and admit there is a decline. That part is still up in the air.

I guess what seems weird to me is that the mixup with the dogs wasn't a deficiency in short-term memory or working memory, it was like old memories got rewritten or mixed together somehow.
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dementia generally manifests itself with short term memory difficulties. my mother is as bent as hogans goat but earlier life memories are pretty consistant. if an elder is ill with dementia there is one dead giveaway; they lie like a rug on valium..
gee i hope ive been concise enough.
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Could be alzheimers or dementia. Either way, there is no cure.
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