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The Eldercare support group - Senior Solutions of America, Inc.

Contributor “Tom”

 My mother is 88. She lives in her own home by herself and is about 85 miles away. I am an only child.

It has been my goal to keep her in this situation as long as she can care for herself. In general she does well. She fixes her own meals, takes her medications, and has good hygiene.

Her overall health is good. She does take medications for high blood pressure, arthritis, circulation, thyroid, heart, antacid, gout medication and elavil at night. Her hearing is not good and she does have macular degeneration which makes it very difficult for her to read.

While her memory fails her at times, she is alert and can carry on intelligent conversations. I call her every day and visit her once a week to take her shopping, to doctors appointments, etc.

Now for the problem:

Over the past 9 months or so, she has reported increasing incidence of hallucinatory episodes. At first, she tended to hear music (opera usually) late at night. Then she started reporting seeing her sister (who passed 2 years ago) walking in the house late at night. Next, she heard people working on the house during the day -- no one was working on the house. More recently, she has made supper for my father (who passed 12 years ago) and made lunch for people she thought was working on the house.

We visited her physician, and he prescribed Namenda which she has been phasing into during the past 3 weeks. She is now complaining about feeling "out of it" for about 4 hours after taking the morning dosage. She has not reported any hallucinatory incidents -- until today.

Today she says that 2 of her neighbors and their daughter enter the house through a bedroom window, and that they were in the bedroom talking. She said that she actually saw them and swears that they were there. She told them to get out of the house and not come back. She said that they then talked a little and then left (supposedly through the bedroom window). This was in late afternoon -- most of these incidents have occurred during daytime hours.

I am at wits end. When she relates these experiences to me either in person or on the phone, I can feel my blood pressure and heart rate increasing. I get very shaky (I already have tremors). I don't know what to do. She seems alright with the exception of these incidents. I know she is lonely but neighbors call her and stop in to see her. She refuses to have the TV or radio on during the day.

If anyone has any suggestions, thoughts or reactions, I would appreciate it.  Thank you.

Tom