Ao backstory about 2 months ago my mom was in an inpatient psychiatric facility due to a 1013 hold. After brain scans the psychiatrist diagnosed her with BPD and FTD as evidenced from scans and testing. We moved her to assisted living from there. Fast forward a couple of weeks and this past Friday it was discovered she was self harming. Biting herself leaving bruises and broken skin because "she was so angry" mom said. AL called an emergency behavioral health nurse practitioner in same day. Mom is caliming they retested her and said there is no way she has BPD or FTD and its just grief as she has told us all along. Of course it was late Friday and nobody called us to discuss the outcome like they said they would so all i have is what she is saying. I guess im looking for anyone elses thoughts. I think she was showtiming for the nurse because earlier that day she got a warning from the director that she was dangerously close to going back inpatient if she didnt try to settle down and calm down. I could tell she was trying her best to behave after that. Has anyone else been through something similar? No scans were done again if first scans showed moderate FTD how can someone talking to her for an hour that has never seen her before say it was wrong. Could she be making this up? She is 69 by the way.
If Mom has FTD she may very well be making this up. Mom self harming herself and should be brought up to the doctor who was seeing her in the unit. She may need to be medicated.
It is EXTREMELY concerning.
Scans don't lie. If you had a skilled assessment done, those results do not disappear, and something here is radically amiss, especially in light of the self-harming and the DECREASE, not increase in normal mentation.
You truly need to take scans to a good neuro-psyc and this needs to be fully medically explained and worked on by a good hospital with adequate neuro-psyc department. I see in your profile that there have been mental health issues, right along. And it is often difficult to assess patients who present with two modalities going.
But scans don't lie.
Anything that a Forum of strangers would say to you now is complete guesswork.
We can't know what medications or med cocktails are being tried. We don't know your Mom, her diagnosis or prognosis, or history. It is very likely that she does have both dementia and mental illness.
I am afraid I can only wish you good luck, and advise you to follow up.
When you combine BPD with dementia, what ensues is chaos like nothing else. My mother had BPD and vascular dementia so all I dealt with was histrionics, I'm sorry to say, since I was a child. The dementia just intensified the lies and the confabulating, at least in my mother's case.
I'd take what your mother is saying with a grain of salt until you can verify it with the NP.
Best of luck to you.
My dad told me and everyone else whatever he thought would best serve his purposes. It was crazy making at 1st and it took me a while to listen knowing what I knew was truth, not his version of the truth.
Great big warm hugs! This is hard when mental illness and dementia collide in a brain. It will be a roller-coaster, so prepare yourself, you'll be okay.
You know this.
I’m sorry you are looking for an exit ramp (I don’t blame you), but this is what’s going on.
If they get a UTI (Urinary Tract Infection) it can exacerbate their behavioral symptoms.
exacerbate: makes the behavior worse
If a patient has had frequent UTI's needing antibiotics, they may get Candida, a yeast infection. I am sure that having a yeast infection can cause a person to cry.
The threat of going inpatient may deter her in the moment but if she were able to control her behavior with just a warning wouldn’t that be great….
If mom is self harming then her meds may need adjusting to help her with her “grief”.
I would just assure mom that you will be visiting with her doctor soon.