Spotting early signs of vascular dementia

In trying to grasp the reality of my mother's disease, I have been going back in my memory trying to uncover what happened to her. Discovering at what point it started is difficult because it didn't happen overnight.

Five years ago she was still going to work, driving her car, getting her own groceries, living as she had been for many years. Since she lived alone, and did many things independently, there wasn't an easy way to know how she was functioning in those capacities. In retrospect, I realize she must have started slipping at work because I remember her complaining a lot about her boss asking her if she was ok.

Around this time I began to notice she would get frustrated if I called her at work. That kind of makes sense to not want to get interrupted at work, unless I compare it to how she used to act when I would call. There were other times that her mood seemed uncharacteristic too, like when my daughters and I would take her out for lunch and she seemed like she would rather be doing something else. It wasn't just one time. It seemed like there was definitely something going on with her.

This is what I would describe as the "early signs". They were so subtle that she could have just been having a bad day, the main difference being that it was lasting more like six months, maybe longer. I wasn't looking for these signs so I wasn't keeping a record. She had never been the kind of person who liked you to be in her business, and I had already been asking her to go to a dentist for years (she had neglected her teeth forever) and had been told to, "Take care of my own life.", so I didn't talk to her about these changes I had noticed.

What happened next was perhaps what you might call a "worsening of symptoms".

She fell in her driveway, which was on a pretty steep incline. She had lived in the same house in the same driveway for forty years and never fallen. On the Mayo Clinic website, vascular dementia is characterized by "confusion, trouble paying attention or concentrating, slowed thinking, and unsteady gait", among other signs.

She told me about it a week later, and said she had gone to a doctor and they didn't find a concussion or anything else wrong. She continued to operate as if everything was normal, going to work, and getting by.

When Covid began and she was relegated to working from home, I was not going over to visit her because we were told to keep older people safe by staying away from them, remember? So I would call her and she would tell me everything was fine like she always does. She started going for long walks around town, because she had been cooped up for a few weeks. Not long after, she lost her balance on the street, fell on the concrete and broke her arm, and bruised up her face, ribs, and hip. Fortunately a kind person discovered her and called her an ambulance. My brother and I traded off staying with her until her arm could heal. Concern over contaminating her with Covid germs became the least of our worries. It was apparent she was not quite with it mentally, but I thought it was just the pain meds she was on for the broken arm. We started attending her doctor's appts with her and were made aware she had been given the diagnosis of vascular dementia.

Being with her in person, I finally got to evaluate how much her balance had become affected; by the dementia, the first fall in the driveway, or the second I couldn't tell because I hadn't seen her between those times. After months of aid, her balance issue actually improved, which made me think there was some level of concussion going on even though it didn't show up in the scan. But the memory problem continued to worsen.

#vasculardementia

#vascularhealth