My mother is also in al ALZ ALF.  She is close to my brother and about 1-1/2
hours away from me.  I visit about once a week.  One week I went and she was
much improved.  She recognized me, thought I was her sister, but at least I
wasn't a stranger.  Chatted with me, just small talk but relatively
coherent.  She had been up walking with her walker instead of in her
wheelchair.  What a difference.

A week later, when I visited any progress was gone, things were back to
usual.  She didn't know me, ignored me like I was a stranger.  Sitting in
her wheelchair, couldn't string 2 or 3 words together to make a sentence.
This is the most dramatic uptick I've seen but there have been other times
she seemed improved to only regress back.

I've read that this isn't all that uncommon.

Camille

Hi Tom,

Yes, as Camille mentioned, sometimes it happens, and when it does it is
wonderful, but there are no guarantee that it will last more than a moment
or a day.

Another possibility (just a wild one) would be that the person did not
really have Alzheimers, was incorrectly diagnosed, and whatever condition
they had, it was a reversible one.   Other kinds of dementia do exist which
present in much the same way as Alzheimers does.   Some of those conditions
are treatable and often reversible.

If you have received a well researched and confirmed diagnosis, I would just
chalk it up to one of those lucky days, and enjoy it.

One possibility Tom is that she is getting better nutrition now she is
in a facility, or perhaps some underlying medical problem is resolved.
Either of those will dramatically affect cognition in many people.
With my MIL, even a headcold would make a dramatic change in how "with
it" she appeared, and as we all know, people with AD can have all
kinds of niggling health issues that are very hard to detect and
diagnose. If the person can't report symptoms or answer questions
appropriately, it takes a real detective to ferret out low level
infections or even more serious things that fly below the detection
ceiling.

And then again, as others have noted, things can fluctuate
dramatically from week to week or month to month. When my MIL broke
her hip the first time, she was completely loopy for weeks to the
point where the hospital accused us of being in denial and lying about
her condition prior to the break (i.e. they didn't believe us that
she'd been quite with it, managing her life quite well living alone
etc.).
She did come back quite a ways over the next few months, so if you
hadn't seen her prior to the break, you might have thought she was in
a bad way with the AD and she'd had an amazing reversal.

Mary G.