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AbbyRose Asked December 2019

Mom has Mixed Dementia. Mom is making up words when she can't find the right one, is this the beginning of stage 7? She's in stage 6.

Today, while visiting Mom, she couldn't remember the word she needed to fit her sentence, so she made up a word that was completely gibberish. She not only did this one time, but several times. She got frustrated, but not mad, when she couldn't complete her thought. She also lives in a delirium world: she believes my dad is at work and that her parents are living. All are deceased.


I don't believe anything she tells me. I just let her tell her stories and let her live happily in her world. She lives in an AL facility. She also told me today that she was going to Ohio to live because it's a nice place. Thing is, she's never been to Ohio. I don't know why she picked Ohio. We have no family or friends who live there.


Many thanks for commenting or for sharing similar stories of your LO.

JoAnn29 Dec 2019
Its hard to say what stage anyone with a Dementia is in. Stages can over lap. My Mom forgot to use a phone long before some of the members on this forums parents, who I feel are more advanced than Mom was. The TV, dreams and hearing other peoples conversations will effect your Moms thinking. They all become part of "her"reality. Mom was still living with me when I came home and came thru her door. She told me the Dr. wanted to talk to me and she pointed to the TV. She was watching Diagnosis Murder and the Dr. was Dick VanDyke.

There is a video on utube that describes stages pretty well. Once ur to utube put Alzheimers in "search". Yes ALZ is different in how it effects the brain than other Dementias but this cartoon was helpful in tell u what happen when parts of the brain are effected. Pick the yellow brain video.
AbbyRose Dec 2019
Thanks JoAnn29 for your info on YouTube, I'll check it out.
cwillie Dec 2019
On the FAST scale stage 7 is characterized as
"Speech ability declines to about a half-dozen intelligible words. Progressive loss of ability to walk, to sit up, to smile, and to hold head up."
On the Global Deterioration Scale (CGS)
"People in this stage have essentially no ability to speak or communicate. They require assistance with most activities (e.g., using the toilet, eating). They often lose psychomotor skills. For example, the ability to walk."

Using any kind of scale with mixed dementia is hit or miss but I don't think that it sounds like your mother is even close to stage 7. In the final 2 years of my mother's life she could no longer walk or even turn in bed, talk more than 3 or 4 words at a time, or feed herself. Of course she was confused and incontinent years before that.
AbbyRose Dec 2019
Thanks, for sharing. :)

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