This morning as we had coffe together my husband started talking about not understanding why he was trying to find a large enough container during the night to urinate in. I told him he must have been dreaming and he said, "we'll, I'm going out to the garage to see if I was. He came back & informed me that he hadn't been dreaming. I still didn't understand what he was talking about. A short time later I went out to the garage on an errand & when i came back into the utility room there was a white waste paper basket sitting on the floor in the UR with urine in it. He & I talked about it & that it must have been a delusion...neither of us understanding why he didn't or couldn't use one of our 2 bathrooms.

He has been doing so well that this really messed with my head. Then tonight he asked if we had spiders in the attic because he thought they were coming down thru the vent. I know this fluctuation is part of the disease but it makes me feel so uneasy. Any thoughts any of you could share will be appreciated.

Susieg

Delusions are hard to deal with. Sometimes they cause anxiety that is hard to calm. My husband has been delusional for years--and not just occasionally--and the best solution, when possible, seems to be playing along with the delusion. E.g, you could tell your husband that you've called the exterminators and they will take care of the spider problem. If he wonders why they haven't come yet, you just have to have them canceling and rescheduling the appointment. Some experimentation will show you what works best. My husband is often very anxious about a meeting he's supposed to attend or a flight he's supposed to take. Usually, a simple, 'The flight has been canceled' or 'the meeting has been postponed until next week' will suffice. At times, the SNF staff helps me by playing along.

Thank you for your reply. It's good to know that even when we feel alone, we truly are not alone.

Susieg

With my father, he often saw a cat or someone standing in the room -- or perhaps looking in the window. The worst night was when he insisted there were 3 race horses in the apt. I would tell him there were no people or animals in the room and he would get aggravated that I did not see whatever he was seeing, but later learned that I needed to go into his world and act like I saw them as plainly as he did. It made for a much more peaceful situation and more interesting (but brief) conversations.

My mother now lives in a delusional world of her own nearly 100% of the time. My sister and I are not her daughters, but are her sisters. My mother sees children, cats, women in cots, etc. in her room. Fortunately, her hallucinations are rarely frightening to her. But her delusions can be. For the most part, though, her delusions seem to be very entertaining and pleasant for her.

Julianne

Hello,

I have found that sometimes the delusions are based on misinterpreting what really does exist. For instance my Mom kept saying she saw a bear out side the door. it turned out to be family members using her sliding shower chair to hang a few fuzzy carpets on, and i could see the resemblance

I am also concerned thast new drugs Trazadone and rispiridone are causing mom to be more delusional.

My husband had a bad reaction to risperidone. He did OK on trazadone but it didn't help him sleep, which is why it was ordered.

Risperdal was a bad drug for us too and we ended up with Seroquel which worked and we had to keep adjusting the amounts !

We have also had good response to seroquel. My mother's delusions were very frightening and upsetting to her, and disturbing to the rest of us. The building was on fire at least once a week, I kept getting carjacked on the way home (3 1/2 miles in a quiet college town), my grandson fell off the balcony and had broken bones, and later was kidnapped, and so on. We did have to adjust the dosage up once or twice but she is still on a relatively low dose (25 mg twice a day) and does not seem to have problems now.

Laurel,
We started out with 25 mg then over time added more and the final dose was 175mg per day, but I also think the hallucinations are very much part of the Rollercoaster of this illness, sometimes they are there and other tims they are not ! I am glad it works for your mom because I always think Yuk I hate these type of drugs but sometimes we really have to think would our LO's really want to behave this way and I know what the answer would have been in our house hold and that was what helped me decide in what was best for him !

Hospice Doctor said my mom is to far along to benifit from cholinesterase inhibitors, i would think they would always keep synapses open longer.

Yes, could be that the cholinesterase inhibitors would not help much, if there is already too much damage. But seroquel is a different thing altogether, an atypical antipsychotic. I would not have worried about my mother's delusions if they had been pleasant or amusing - for example if she had acquired an imaginary pet lhasa apso. But hers were very disturbing and it was clear that we needed to try to control them to give her comfort and peace of mind. She has declined substantially cognitively but the delusions have not returned. So it's worth talking to your neurologist about LBD-appropriate meds to treat delusions, if they are a serious problem for him or for you. I could probably live with peeing in a trash can, but not with all the scary anxiety-provoking ones. (I also banned the 6 pm news, which is a septic miasma of lurid local crimes in most places, owing to the market research suggesting that is what sells. Bah. But now she doesn't listen to TV anyway, and she does not see a newspaper, and her visual perception probably would not allow reading anyway.)
Laurel