I’ve been back home for a week after visiting my mother in Michigan. The trip was short and rushed as there was so much I needed to do for my mother. And relatives to visit, as well. I had no time for visiting friends, sadly.
In January my mother moved into memory care from the independent living apartment she had on the campus of her retirement community. She was hallucinating small animals in her apartment and having difficulty with time.
I kid you not that the minute she moved into memory care, the hallucinations stopped and she began to wonder, “Why does everybody in here have mental issues?”
A few weeks after she moved in I got a call from the director of assisted living (which includes memory care as well as regular assisted living) who said, “Your mother doesn’t belong in memory care. She knows who everyone is.”
And THAT is what I had been telling the staff at the community from the beginning of this whole hallucination period: “If she needs memory care why does she still know everyone–new people and family and old friends–and everything about them?”
They moved her into regular assisted living, and after visiting her I can tell you that is where she needs to be right now. She still relates well to people but continues to have some troubles with schedules and also cannot seem to organize herself.
As an aside: I have reason to believe that she might have had an undiagnosed UTI that did not show up on regular tests–and that most likely caused the hallucinations.
The gardener and I spent a great deal of time helping Mom organize her tiny apartment. We took her to buy a “petite” lift chair and found a gorgeous cherrywood (light finish) end table made by Amish craftspeople that was half price. I decided where all her pictures should be hung and put push pins in the proper places. The staff wouldn’t allow us to hang them ourselves.
One of the pictures is an 11×14 canvas painted by my two-year-old grandson for her. Mom and I Facetimed with little Hudson and his dad, too.
And when I talked to Mom the other day she said she points out Hudson’s painting to everyone who comes in to her room.
