It means she suffers from Alzheimer's and her brain is giving her bad signals and error messages. Every night for a month now my mother tells me she has to get home to see her mother (who died 35 yrs ago) and has no idea how she'll do that. Then she says she'll just spend the night in her bed but what should she do tomorrow? I tell her she should spend the night in her suite tomorrow as well and sleep in her comfy bed and watch some tv to make her laugh. She's lived in the same Memory Care for 2 yrs now and doesn't have a UTI, just advancing dementia. Her Cymbalta medication is also affecting her dementia so it's being dxed. She always has bad side effects with all medications which complicates everything beyond belief. Is your mom taking any new meds lately that you can point to as the possible culprit for added confusion?
If not, just divert her to another topic or tell her you'll take her to the motel tomorrow. Good luck....its a real challenge, this dreadful disease
Definitely get her checked for a UTI. If it's not that, perhaps her dementia is increasing and if she is living alone, that might be becoming more unsafe.
It's common for people to no longer recognize that they ARE home. They may be in a stage where they are remembering their childhood home. Or even that would likely look unfamiliar and not satisfy the desire to be "home".
Wanting to live in a motel? Who knows? I would just come up with a generic, vague response to say something like "I'll look into that for you mom. What do you want for breakfast??".
It just means that she doesn't recognize her house as hers anymore. Just yesterday on my local caregivers support group meeting on Zoom, one of the ladies was sharing that her husband kept telling her that he wanted to go home, and where they were living wasn't their home. This went on for many days, and she was quite beside herself as to what to do. So she put him in their car and told him that she was going to take him home. She drove around for a while and then went back to their home, and he was content that in fact he was now home. Now how long that will last, only time will tell, but at least she now has a trick to try if it does. Best wishes.
If this is a sudden change in her mental status, please call her doctor and report that.
Often, it can be as simple as a urinary tract infection (they can cause worsened dementia and behavioral symptoms in the elderly). It can be as complicared as a stroke.
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If not, just divert her to another topic or tell her you'll take her to the motel tomorrow. Good luck....its a real challenge, this dreadful disease
It's common for people to no longer recognize that they ARE home. They may be in a stage where they are remembering their childhood home. Or even that would likely look unfamiliar and not satisfy the desire to be "home".
Wanting to live in a motel? Who knows? I would just come up with a generic, vague response to say something like "I'll look into that for you mom. What do you want for breakfast??".
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Often, it can be as simple as a urinary tract infection (they can cause worsened dementia and behavioral symptoms in the elderly). It can be as complicared as a stroke.
Please, talk to her doctor, soon.