Hi RAWKers.
I really don't know what else to do to seek some solace, comfort, or even just information, so I'm coming here in the hope that someone has experienced something like this and can offer any words of ... well i don't know what I want really. I feel very disconcerted and need to hear anything that might be deemed as positive, because I am terrified and fearing the worst.
My mum is 65, and in generally decent health. Certainly has never showed a single sign of any mental or cognitive illness ever in her life. I live in Bali and I video call home to mum and dad every single Sunday evening, without fail. So I can certainly tell if something is up with either of them.
Anyway, before this weeks call, my Dad WhatsApp's me seperately (not in the group WhatsApp we have) to say "just to ward you son, in case your mum says something weird" I was like, what do you mean? He says "she's been getting easily confused a lot this week, saying things that never happened etc"
Anyway so I called, and in about 20 minute call, my mum was indeed talking nonsense, remebering events that never happened, and seemingly forgetting what she was trying to say half the time. I asked 'what did you do at the weekend' my mum answers 'we took the car to the garage to get fixed' (they don't have a car and havent had one for years). She asked me what I was doing this week i said 'watching the World Cup' and she answered 'oh, yor dad was watching a game yesterday' (he wasn't). Then she told me she had booked a table for us at a restaurant to all have dinner together, which she hadn't, and as I'm in Bali it wouldnt be something we would do normally anyway. She said 'we have visitors (which is true), we are going out for dinner' but made reference to two totally different people even tho the visitors were in the room with her.
Anyway I ended the call and was very disturbed and alarmed... it seemed like my mum was completely losing the plot.
Later that evening my dad messaged me to say that mum had discovred that she had ran out of thyroid medicine a few weeks ago and forgot to order more. A bit of relief as a lack of thyroid meds could explain her strange behaviour... but this relief was shattered when my dad went to the Doc to check and the Doc said she was taken off Thyroid meds 4 years ago... so actually unlikely to be that and is another figment of my mums imagination.
Then yesterday one of her mates turned up at the door out of the blue, apparently my mum invited her but she didnt remembr.. anyway she came in for a cuppa and my dad said he was listening to what my mum was telling her and it was another load of absolute made up events that my mum seems to have invented out of thin air, but telling her mate it happened yesterday or this week or whatever and none of it actually happened.
I'm absolutely terrified. Of course my thoughts imediately turn to those scary things, Alzhiemers or Dementia. I don't know much about them and have never lived with or had a loved one affected by them. But this doesn't seem to fit... it's come on all so suddenly, literally in a week, and she has zero previous of this, usually as sharp as a nail. Also not really 'forgetting' things, more liike she is just making things up that never happened but then telling people about it like it was real events.
She's had bloods but we have to wait a week for results
And at the speed at which she is 'deterioraring' (i hesitate to use that word...i mean the symptoms are getting worse) then i don't know what to think.
If anyone has any knowledge of this kind of thing or has heard of instances like this? I don't really know what i am expecting really but more just I am going out of my mind with worry and wondering if anyone else has experienced behaviour like this from a loved one, and what it was... :'(