My mother went to her first assessment at the assisted living where she will
be moving to next month.   The questions that she was asked were mostly yes
and no.   Mom sounded perfectly normal even though she lied a lot in her
answers.   I could tell this woman was believing my mother was in fairly
good shape.   She even commented on how nice Mom's skin looked.   Bathing is
a big issue with my mother and her doctor had previously said she could tell
that Mom wasn't bathing by the look of her skin.    I was afraid that they
would expect Mom to be able to do more than she can.  Finally I just looked
the nurse in the eye and said don't be fooled-- she's in the latter stages
of dementia.   My mother said nothing because she either didn't hear or more
probably she couldn't process what I was saying.   She will be going to the
doctor for a checkup too and her new doctor picked up on the dementia pretty
quick last time she was there.  Hopefully her physical will be more telling
than her interview with the AL nurse.   Since Mom is going to Assisted
Living I checked with her eye doctor who is also my optometrist about her
glaucoma.   I was told that it is stable and that the tests she took showed
her vision was not deteriorating.   They said it was very surprising that
someone with dementia could actually do as well as mom did.   You have to
push a button when you see a pin point light in  your peripheral vision.   I
even have trouble with that test!   My brother has been letting mom take her
own eye drops and I even checked her prescription and she's right where she
should be on the bottle she's using.   I too have to take eye drops so I'm
familiar with the whole thing.
At our family reunion a few months ago, I was talking to the husband of my
mother's cousin.   I thanked him for helping me with some of the details of
getting the reunion together.   He talked to me about his wife's dementia
and told him I had noticed it a couple of years ago and that was why I had
been contacting him instead of her (as I usually did) about the getting the
building rented.   He looked astonished.   He said "You knew?"  I said yes
I'd know that look anywhere because  Mom's had dementia since '93.   Sadly
he said he didn't pick up on his wife's dementia back then.   Now she can't
even dress herself.
I thought I'd post my experiences with my mother's dementia since they seem
to be out of the "normal"  ......June