He persisted a while and I took his hand and he said thank you for helping and returned to be and went to sleep. Nedless to say it was a while before I could sleep. Today he seems to be what we know is his normal. No mention from him nor did I mention it. Was that right and how can this be so fleeting but so real? Is that a hallucination or a delusion?
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Is there any reason to think this is more than that? If he forgot the dream, then it sounds like it is within the normal range of experience.
Does he have any medical background, or it this related in any way to any other life experience? You don't give a lot of context. Is this a replay of something that ever happened to him?
Does he take any medication that might cause this sort of mental perturbance?
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Baseball bats?
No, the little animals that kind of look like mice with wings.
Ah, bats. ... Are they bothering you?
No. They are just sleeping here next to the bed.
Well, as long as they are not bothering you, would it be alright if we just let them sleep, and if they are still there in the morning I'll shoo them out?
OK.
Whew! I really did not want to get up at that ungodly hour.
Usually (but not always) LBD delusions/hallucinations are benign. And if there they are not disturbing to the person having them I don't see a reason to try to convince them of "reality." Dear hubby did not remember the bats by morning, and I certainly did not bring them up.
She came to my room like 1 am in a panic asking where my dad went. He passed two years earlier. She said he was lying next to her and then when she turned towards him he was gone. She was searching around for him... looking in bathrooms, etc. and then wanted to get her shoes to go outside looking for him. I realized the risk of telling her the truth but I had no choice as she was becoming more and more panicked.. When I told her she was dreaming and dad passed two years ago she started screaming as if she was told for the very first time. She went into hysterics and crying uncontrolably... turning pale and looking faint. I called paramedics. She cried in the ER for hours... finally came back to reality. The ER doctor diagnosed it as dementia related. I asked about the Gabapetin and he was dismissive and said no, that drug doesn't cause this type of reaction. I then Googled the side effects and read all kinds of horror stories. That was an awakening for me too... to see the blatant and insistent misdiagnosis. She never took that med again and hasn't had that type of episode again, thank God.
I recall reading a post from a woman whose husband insisted there was a fish hook in the blanket. Failing to calm him down with reassurances, she went out and came back with a pliers and with something else in her closed hand. She showed him the pliers and with her back to him she put a fishing fly in it, turned around and exclaimed, I got it! Her satisfied husband went back to sleep. She showed him that she took his concerns seriously and that she would do her best to care for him. The "removal" of the fish hook was secondary.
As to whether it was a delusion or hallucination, I guess that depends on if he was seeing what he was describing.
Sometime ago a poster wrote that her mother could become anxious finding and rounding up "all the babies". While I don't remember all the details, I believe that she had lost a child when she was younger. I think the trauma of that death presented itself later in life.
I think that notwithstanding dementia and old age issues, we don't really fully understand the nature of dreams. I still have them about my sister, who died in 2003. In my dreams, she's alive and healthy. I had intense dreams also right after my mother and sister died fairly close together.
Ambien is another possibility. Two of my family members and one friend said they had very unsettling dreams when they took Ambien, which is why they didn't take it after realizing it caused disturbing dreams.
No he wasn't but I was a nurse and he started the request with "nurse"...! What would you suppose?
You're such a good wife!